Ron DeSantis’ accelerating descent into polling single digits is not deterring him from adding to his massive tome of misinformation. When the going gets tough, Ron invariably reverts to spewing dangerous B.S. about public health. This has been his go-to since he was first sent to Tallahassee. This time his attempt to kill his constituents is about the newly released Covid vaccines.
 
In Florida, the weekly number of reported new Covid cases was almost 24,000 as September began, up from 7,320 in June. The state, which leads the nation in Covid hospitalization rates, saw 2,280 people hospitalized in the week ending September 9. Its overall pandemic death toll is now over 90,000.
 
Despite these numbers, DeSantis is backing his surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who is warning Floridians to steer clear of the new Covid vaccines. In a demonstration of loyalty to his boss worthy of the most servile of Trump flunkies, Ladapo claims, falsely, that the new boosters were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
Both DeSantis and Ladapo are Harvard alums. That means that they are either (1) consummate liars willing to subjugate the lives and health of their citizens to their political ambitions, or (2) that Harvard should be bounced from the Ivy League.
 
This anti-vaccine lunacy is nothing new for Ladapo. He once claimed that a healthy diet is preferable to getting vaccinated. He has been censured by both the FDA and CDC for harming public safety by “fueling vaccine hesitancy.” Ladapo was forcibly removed from a state senator’s office during the pandemic for refusing to wear a mask despite the senator’s having a serious medical condition.
 
Aspiring authoritarian DeSantis accuses Big Pharma and the government of being guilty of “medical authoritarianism” in pushing vaccines on an unsuspecting public. Pot, meet kettle. He goes on to tout Florida’s freedom from vaccine mandates. He says that, if elected president (good luck with that!), he won’t allow the government to fund Covid boosters.
 
Given the resurgence of the virus in Florida and nationally, reckless claims such as this mean that Floridians and others who lend credence to these untruths are putting themselves at risk. Undeterred, DeSantis continues to double down on his “advice,” adding to it a polemic against mask mandates and other Covid safety measures.
 
As with virtually everything else intended to harm the public in the name of so-called “freedom,” all of this extreme right-wing hogwash, humbuggery, hokum and hooey finds its origins in Trumpism, the ideology that says that the pursuit of power justifies any means of securing it. Of course, it helps that millions of voters have been conditioned by Fox News and its malevolent right-wing media spawn to accept as gospel the garbage they gush.
 
It’s also incredibly dangerous for society at large. Covid anti-vaccine hysteria is spilling over into vaccinations writ large. The number of children being protected against childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, polio et al. is steadily declining.
 
Moreover, the “freedom” that DeSantis, Dr. Ladapo and their reactionary fellow-travelers espouse neither include a woman’s right to sovereignty over her own body nor transgender care. In April 2023, DeSantis signed a 6-week abortion ban with very limited exceptions: Abortions for pregnancies involving rape or incest would be allowed until 15 weeks of pregnancy, provided a woman has documentation such as a restraining order or police report!
 
DeSantis himself disclosed last year that he has been vaccinated. However, he refuses to say if he has been boosted.
 
It is a sad commentary on the direction of this country that the Republican Party has substituted lies, hypocrisy, rank opportunism and a yearning for autocracy for honesty, patriotism and democracy. The only solution to this metastasizing cancer on the body politic is at the ballot box. Otherwise, the harm these despicable creatures are doing will only escalate.
 
Dick Hermann
September 24, 2023


Note: If you want to attend my book talk about Eminent Riaprians: Finger Lakes Luminaries and Leading Lights, at 6:00 PM, Monday, September 25th at the Wood Library in Canandaigua, NY, click on https://woodlibrary.librarycalendar.com/event/book-talk-local-author-richard-hermann to register for the program
​

​Avert your eyes from the hot mess that is today’s U.S. House of Representatives. The political party erroneously continuing to be called “Republican” behaves as if its role in the slower, lower chamber should be to shame itself as much, and as publicly, as possible. Every successive utterance by its leaders is a competition to see who can make more of an ass of him/herself than the next guy/gal.
 
Speaker/Squeaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (a.k.a., Trump’s “My Kevin”) abases himself by announcing an impeachment inquiry of President Biden notwithstanding that a host of investigations by House committees have uncovered zero evidence of wrongdoing. Pressured to launch a revenge impeachment by none other than the twice-and-very-legitimately-impeached, disgraced former president, My Kevin could not find the spine necessary to resist Trump’s demand for retribution. Spines, as we have discovered when considering Republican House members, are in short supply.
 
James Comer and Jim (Gym) Jordan, the two hapless buffoons leading the House investigating committees, have turned up nothing despite their earnest efforts to smear Biden and link him to his drug-addled son’s misadventures. Nevertheless, they keep on keeping on in a desperate hope that someone somewhere will emerge out of the dismal swamp in which they wallow and provide them with a smoking squirt gun. To quote a relatively sane former GOP president: “Not gonna happen.”
 
As if this adventure in frivolous political Kabuki theater were not enough, the mis-labeled “Freedom Caucus” rabble rousers continue to attempt to shred American Democracy in pursuit of their fever-dream of an autocracy led by their certifiable and preternaturally evil cult hero who will lead them to the promised land, one where the color of their skin will enable them to percolate to the apex of power rather than the totally lacking content of their character. Matt (“she was just seventeen, you know what I mean”) Gaetz, Marjorie (“beware the Gazpacho”) Taylor Greene, Loren (“hey, sailor, wanna vape?”) Boebert and their ill-starred ilk threaten to blow up the system if their extreme demands are not met. From My Kevin’s feeble vantage point, the Freedumb Caucus has the meat.
 
Meanwhile, the nervous nellies who comprise the so-called “moderate Republicans,” the very definition of an anachronism, tremble in terror and remain mute in the face of potential political extinction if they permit this circular firing squad to lock and load. Unquestionably, they will sit on their hands and mute themselves before showing any backbone and protest this lunacy.
 
In past crises, e.g., the Civil War, the Great Depression, civil rights and Watergate, there have always been at least a handful of brave congresspeople who put the good of the country above their personal interests and careers. They stood up, often alone, to assert: “This cannot stand.” Alas, not in today’s Republican Party. Once again, I return to my, by now trite, hackneyed, commonplace, cliché-ish and mightily overused historical analogy: Diogenes would have run out of lamp oil before his search unearthed a principled Republican.
 
Dick Hermann
September 17, 2023

Can it possibly be that the chaos and confusion of the last decade have inured us to the abnormal, the aberrational, and the anomalous? Judging by the daily news, it sure seems that way.
 
What pushed me over the edge was a recent poll in which respondents were asked whether Presidents Trump or Biden had accomplished more in office. Astonishingly, Trump prevailed by ten points! It’s difficult, nay impossible, to believe that Americans actually believe that this man who left the country in a shambles, did better than his normal, mainstream, norm-respecting successor. Did the people who opted for Trump forget about his calamitous mismanagement of the pandemic; his cabinet of grifters, fools and incompetents; his dismantling of essential international agreements; his racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism; his 30,000-plus documented lies; his Muslim ban; the highest personnel turnover of any administration; his weaponization of the Justice Department; his reckless mishandling of classified documents, including war plans and nuclear secrets; and of course, the January 6 culmination of his Herculean effort to overthrow the government and remain in power? I could go on, but you get the point.
 
In contrast, President Biden pushed through a spate of legislation designed to tackle some of the nation’s most vexing problems, including lowering drug and healthcare costs; the largest-ever investment in climate change mitigation; gun safety legislation; the largest-ever investment in mental health services; the Chips and Science Act; the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; the American Rescue Plan; leading America to the lowest inflation rate in the developed world; the PACT Act expanding healthcare coverage for 3.5 million veterans exposed to burn pits; revitalizing NATO and supporting Ukraine in its war for survival; reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (which Trump allowed to lapse); and more.
 
The heightened concern about Biden’s age is another conundrum hard to understand. Trump is only three years younger and quite obviously in far worse physical and mental condition than Biden. Trump consumes a horrible diet and does not believe in exercise (riding around in a golf cart doesn’t count). His daily diatribes and incoherent interviews demonstrate a severely compromised mental capacity that looks to be deteriorating with every new outburst. In fact, the age concern should be all about Trump.
 
Republicans’ eternal quest for false equivalences, e.g., equating Hunter Biden’s possible indictment for tax evasion and gun ownership while a drug addict with Trump’s 91 (and counting) felony indictments, is “whataboutism” carried to an extreme.
 
Perhaps the most shocking development is the disdain of Trump and his followers for democracy and their desire to replace America’s greatest contribution to Planet Earth with authoritarianism. Trump late last year called for “terminating the Constitution.” Yet this is the person tied with President Biden in recent polls.
 
This is stunning. Given the balance sheet noted above and his contempt for the Constitution, how can anyone prefer Trump? It is mind-blowing. Moreover, his professed intentions should he re-claim the presidency are chilling: bailing on Ukraine; another round of playing footsie with murderous thug dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un; dismantling NATO; replacing thousands of dedicated civil servants with MAGA cronies; and weaponizing the Justice Department (once again) to serve his personal grievances. He has vowed to use a second term to “lock up” his political opponents and pledged to be his supporters’ “retribution.”
 
Yet, none of this appears to be siphoning votes from this mad man intent on destroying America.
 
Dick Hermann
September 8, 2023
 
Note: I will be presenting a book talk on Mother’s Century on Wednesday, September 13, at 7:00 PM at the Cherry Hill, New Jersey Central Library, 1100 Kings Highway North…and a book talk on Eminent Riparians on Monday, September 25, at 6:00 PM at the Wood Library, 134 North Main Street in Canandaigua, NY. If you happen to be in either area on those dates, you are cordially invited to attend.
​

“Pay the man, Shirley.”
--Norman Chad
 
America is suffering a severe, across-the-board labor shortage. The worker deficit is especially acute across some of our most essential professions. Absent congressional action on fixing our dysfunctional immigration laws, some of these scarcities cannot be resolved.  Others, however, lend themselves to a simple solution that can be immediately implemented. Here are three examples:
 
Law Enforcement. In August, the entire Goodhue, Minnesota police department resigned, citing low pay. The seven-person force earned $22 per hour. In a 2022 survey, two-thirds of law enforcement professionals stated that police recruitment and retention is the largest issue facing law enforcement. The number of police officers nationally has decreased while the population has increased. According to the 2021 International Association of Chiefs of Police Survey on police retention and recruitment:

• 78% of agencies reported having difficulty in recruiting qualified candidates.
• 65% of agencies reported having too few candidates applying to be law enforcement officers.
• The Police Executive Research Forum’s Survey on Police Workforce Trends found an 18% growth in resignations in 2020-21, compared to 2019-20.
• Many departments are seeing officers retire as early as possible and collecting lower pensions due to increased workload and burnout. Retirements increased by 45% in only one year.

 
Education. Heading into the 2023-24 school year, districts are short more than 300,000 teachers. Teachers leaving the profession cite low pay, long hours, piling on of additional responsibilities, having to buy supplies out of their own pockets, shoddy treatment and disrespect by administrators and parents, the strains brought on by the pandemic, and anti-education political initiatives (see, e.g., Florida). 70 percent of teachers work a second job to make ends meet. Impossible demands on top of abysmal pay are driving educators away.
 
In the 21st century, central district offices have devoted more resources to hiring more administrators than teachers. Administrative bloat is rapidly becoming as much of a problem in K-12 as it is in colleges and universities.
 
Healthcare. Emergency medical technicians in the U.S. average about $33,000 per year, barely more than the poverty level for a family of four. EMTs in “red” states earn even less. Few occupations can mean the difference between life and death like that of an EMT. But low wages are forcing EMTs out of their jobs in droves. Similar to not paying reasonable wages to cops and teachers, not paying for indispensable EMT services makes no sense.
 
I learned about supply and demand in my first day of freshman economics in college. If demand for labor is high, but the supply of workers is low, employers need to offer higher wages to being the two curves into equilibrium. It’s too bad that the government officials responsible for tolerating these worker shortages never took microeconomics.
 
The solution is to pay people what they are worth to society. Other countries understand this. American politicians apparently do not.
 
The average annual salary for a Canadian police officer is more than US$76,091. An entry level constable earns US$50,000. Canada does not have a cop recruitment or retention problem.
 
Starting pay for teachers in Switzerland is almost $75,000, roughly twice as much as the U.S. average. Switzerland is not experiencing a teacher shortage. The Alpine nation realizes several powerful collateral benefits from offering attractive salaries: (1) Teaching attracts high achievers to the profession; and (2) Swiss students at every level score much higher on reading, math, science and every other test that measures academic achievement than their U.S. counterparts. Top-notch teachers make a difference.
 
A Canadian EMT in Ontario can earn an annual starting salary equivalent to US$60,000. Those who reach the top of their profession—Critical Care Paramedic—can earn more than US$100,000. Canadians flock to this profession.
 
It should be obvious that all three of these professions are essential to our safety, health and intellectual development. Try doing without them and see what happens. We are perfectly willing to compensate the so-called “learned professions,” particularly medicine and law, at what amount to princely rates. Why them and not cops, teachers and EMTs, all of whom are at least as critical to our well-being?
 
Dick Hermann
September 1, 2023