​. . . on The Altar of Trump’s Re-election?
 
This is an easy calculation. We only have to compare two countries that took opposing paths to combatting the coronavirus.
 
Both the United States and South Korea identified their first confirmed cases of Covid-19 on January 21st. South Korea has one-fifth as many people as the U.S. It has experienced a total of 300 deaths thanks to the immediate effective steps it took to fight the pandemic. Had the U.S. taken the same rational steps in a timely manner, we could have only experienced a maximum of the same proportionate number of deaths—1,500—or five times as many as South Korea. It is possible that we would have suffered even fewer deaths because South Korea is far more densely populated (1,365 vs. 93 people per square mile, or almost 15 times’ greater density than the U.S.), which enables the virus to spread more easily and affect a larger number of people. Given our population density, it is probable that competent national leadership would have been able to limit our death count to well under 1,500.
 
Instead, we have 130,000 deaths (as of this writing) and counting. With only four percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of Covid-19 cases (2.5 million+) and 25 percent of global deaths.
 
Do the math. That means that Trump’s failure of leadership has led to the avoidable death of at least 128,500 Americans who would still be alive had he just done his job.  President Moon Jae In of South Korea, a leader who listens to his professional health experts, did not: (1) ignore the pandemic; (2) do nothing for months, (3) hope it would magically disappear, (4) tout discredited miracle drugs, (5) advocate ingesting bleach, (6) propose injecting UV light into our bodies, (7) demand that governors “liberate” their states from mandatory lockdowns, (7) urge citizens to disregard his own administration’s safety guidelines, or (8) declare victory while death and destruction run riot.
 
Meanwhile, while the South Korean economy is bouncing back nicely, ours is a shambles from which it could take years to recover. What the South Koreans understood that Trump does not is that you have to defeat the virus in order for the economy to regain traction.
 
The United States should be the world leader when it comes to crisis management, especially when the crisis is international. Instead, we are the distant laggard among the developed nations. Forget about taking the lead in tackling a trans-border catastrophe. The rest of the world now regards America as a failed, pariah state. The European Union, poised to reopen its borders to international travel, expressly bans Americans from visiting because we might be viral super-spreaders.
 
What we have lost is incalculable.
 
Dick Hermann
July 3, 2020

​The $600 per week federal supplement to state unemployment benefits runs out at the end of July. Data indicates that millions of Americans have been using this money to help pay their rent or mortgage. Almost 50 percent of renters pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing and utilities, and half of those pay more than 50 percent. Unless Congress comes to the rescue, we are likely to see mass evictions that will dwarf anything we witnessed during the Great Recession of 2008. While the House of Representatives is sensitive to this problem, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, his Republican Senate colleagues and President Trump are not. Yet another epic leadership failure looms.
 
Starting in April, many landlords and some banks deferred rental and mortgage payments, respectively, for 3-4 months, but they are not likely to do so much longer. A number of states are addressing what could be the largest increase in the homeless population in 40 years (since the courts, abetted by the Reagan administration, mandated the closure of hundreds of what we used to call mental institutions) by imposing a moratorium on evictions. This is the wrong way to approach the problem. Landlords should not be forced to bear the burden of zero rental income just because government is incapable of intelligent action. They must continue to pay property taxes, insurance, utility bills and other running expenses whether or not they are receiving rental income.
 
Here is what needs to happen. Congress should enact legislation—a Housing Protection Act (HPA)—comparable to the Paycheck Protection Act (PPA) that provided loans to employers that they do not have to pay back if they keep their employees on the payroll. Translated to housing, landlords would receive similar loans that could become grants if they allowed their tenants to remain in their rental units. Something similar needs to be done for mortgagors who face eviction if they are unable to meet their monthly mortgage payments.
 
Unlike PPA loans, which were rife with confusion, favoritism and application turn-downs by banks, HPA loans should be administered and awarded directly to applicants by either one of the bank regulatory agencies or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cutting out banks as middlemen.
 
The wealthiest nation on Earth can well afford to come to the rescue of its citizens for the duration of this crisis. This is hardly the time to be fretting about increasing the national debt, something both political parties have ignored for 20 years. The time to address debt issues is when the economy is strong. The failure to do that over the last 6-7 years when we experienced a good economy was irresponsible. Moreover, cutting taxes when every responsible economist and public policy analyst called for raising them on rich Americans was a dereliction of duty by both Congress and the president. If we could afford that hit to the national debt, we can certainly afford one that benefits a much wider demographic.
 
But that’s all water over the dam. What we need now is bold and immediate action to stave off an imminent crisis. 4.3 million homeowners missed their May mortgage payments, and more than 665,000 of them are three months in arrears. Banks that deferred mortgage payments are not inclined to forbear any longer. If our political leaders don’t address this problem immediately, we risk adding millions of Americans to the homeless population (the Department of Housing and Urban Development says that 553,000 Americans are currently homeless)—a disaster that will haunt us for years to come and end up costing multiples of what it would cost now to enable them to remain under their own roofs until the current health and economic crises pass. The rending of what little remains of the social fabric that will result will be hard, if not impossible, to repair.
 
Don’t expect the Trump administration to take the initiative to get something like this done. It has failed at every decision point along the way during the coronavirus, economic and racial turmoil that have made our country the poster child for how not to run a government. It is up to Congress to act…and act now.
 
Dick Hermann
June 26, 2020

For three years America survived Donald Trump, fortunate that he had not been called upon to deal with a crisis not of his own making, one that would test his ability to meet the moment. The hope was that we could make it to November 2020 without having to test Trump’s ineptitude should Armageddon strike. 
 
And then all Hell broke loose. Simultaneously, he—and we—are being battered by four major crises: (1) the gravest pandemic in a hundred years, (2) the most serious economic collapse since the Great Depression, (3) massive protests against police brutality and systemic racism, and (4) the most profound rift between a civilian commander-in-chief and our military in our history.
 
These crises have put paid to any illusions anyone might have harbored that Donald Trump is capable of rising to the occasion. He has struck out swinging with respect to each one, in each case making the situation far worse.
 
Covid-19. His denial, delay and dithering has cost thousands of lives and put an ungodly strain on our healthcare infrastructure. His declaration of victory over the virus is a shameful abdication of responsibility. He even finds it OK for his own supporters to get sick and die so long as they shout out their adulation for him at mask-less rallies. Every one of his decisions has increased the infection rate and death toll. He is content with trading lives for his re-election.
 
The 2020 Depression. The man who bragged that he produced the “greatest economy in history” (easily debunked) bears considerable blame for producing the worst economy in our history. Instead of persuading Congress to follow the example of Germany and other countries that moved quickly to make sure that no one would lose their jobs or healthcare due to the pandemic, he remained hidden in the White House while Congress hastily enacted poorly thought-out, half-baked legislation inadequate to the demands of the disaster. Building upon that gross failure, he is now hiding the fact that billions of relief funds likely went to his donors and cronies.
 
The Floyd Murder and Its Consequences. Trump should be in the best position to do something salutary about police behavior and racial injustice. Instead, he is totally compromised for being the president who in 2017 urged police to brutalize suspects and who consistently encourages racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazi violence. He continues to fan the flames of racial hatred—referring to the Secret Service as “the SS;” dog-whistling “law and order” in a Nixonian reprise; proclaiming that military bases named after traitors to the country are somehow part of our heritage; ignoring white supremacist violence in the streets; and denying that America is rife with systemic racism, deep-seated inequality, and widespread police misconduct, about which he issued a punch-less executive order
 
Vs. the Military. This president has consistently tried to exploit the military for his own crass purposes, ironic given his history of draft-dodging and his innate cowardice. No national leader has ever stooped so low as to threaten to unleash the armed forces on peaceful protesters, a shocking violation of the First Amendment. Fortunately, the military brass is resisting his abuse. Watching him speak platitudes and clichés to the much put-upon West Point grads he forced to return to the academy and quarantine for two weeks so he could have a photo-op was appalling.
 
We who have the right to expect much more need to hang on until November 3, when hopefully Americans can finally and resoundingly say: “YOU’RE FIRED!” and then again until January 20, 2021 when he either leaves office or is carried out kicking and screaming.
 
Dick Hermann
June 19, 2020

​This question has been asked repeatedly this century. Inflection points that trigger major change, however, are extremely rare. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, young black men murdered by police, prompted “Black Lives Matter” protests. Each of those atrocities briefly focused media and public attention on police brutality, racism and its collateral effects, and resulted in…nothing. Police behavior leading to the disproportionate killing of African-Americans persists. Similarly, protests provoked by mass shootings at Virginia Tech, Newtown, Orlando, Las Vegas and Parkland did not sway our political leaders to do anything about an escalating problem measured by the terrible toll it was taking of human lives. We did not realize stricter gun laws and the pandemic of mass shootings continues.
 
Here we are once again. A black man—George Floyd—lost his life when a Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck, asphyxiating him, his hand resting casually in his pocket and unconcerned that his action was being captured by a cellphone camera. Meanwhile, three cop colleagues abetted this excessive use of force that resulted in a public murder.
 
The response—mass protests involving Americans of all races erupted in more than 750 cities and towns throughout the nation and in cities around the world. For the most part peaceful, the starkest images we have seen involved police overreaction. A septuagenarian knocked to the pavement by police in Buffalo, exacerbated by fellow officers flaunting their approval for this outrage by walking past the bleeding victim’s inert form, was shocking enough. That was compounded by large-scale police defiance of the city’s timid step of suspending the assaulting officers.
 
While it is clear that discriminatory law enforcement and police misconduct, as well as the systemic racism that still today infects the American psyche, need to be addressed, there is no guarantee that both injustices will be.
 
Four hundred years of coping with America’s original sin—slavery—teaches that excising racism is a very long, hard slog. Comparing efforts to counteract anti-Semitism, note that despite going back millennia, hate crimes against Jews continue and have skyrocketed in the last three years, encouraged by dog whistles and more overt endorsements by the country’s elected leader (see, e.g., Charlottesville). At the very least, it will take education at every level to begin the lengthy, generations-long process of attempting to expunge racism from society. In America, progress is usually a step forward followed by a half-step back. Moreover, unlike the 1960s civil rights movement, there is no clear, charismatic leader around whom the movement can coalesce, no Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That too could be a problem.
 
However, the situation is not without hope. We are certain to see some immediate law enforcement reforms. Several states and cities have already begun the process in response to Floyd’s murder. Banning chokeholds and strangleholds has been one development. In cities where this policy was already in force before, the ban has decreased police killings by 22 percent. Mandating body cameras and their activation at all times has also proven to be a strong deterrent to police brutality. Requiring a duty to intervene by attending officers has had a positive effect. Similarly, de-escalation training. It is also likely that psychological testing as a component of police officer recruitment will be instituted by some local departments. Congress too is considering a spate of reform proposals, including a national police misconduct database. If there will be a roadblock to reforming police procedures, it will likely be found in the collective bargaining agreements that, virtually across the board, protect officers from transparency and accountability. That is where the resistance will coalesce.
 
Despite these hurdles, we can hope that this time will be different and that America will be a better country because of it.
 
Dick Hermann
June 12, 2020

The last week of May began with a public nightmare: the brutal murder of George Floyd caught on a cellphone for the whole world to see. Did our president reach out to calm the nation’s horror and grief, to console and to call for unity? Not at all. Instead, he continued to divide America, presenting us with yet another new rock bottom.
 
His daily indecencies and democracy shredding make us forget the transgressions he committed only days before. Thus, in the interests of documenting what must not be forgotten, I provide the list below.
 
Here is what the Leader of the Free World focused on during the last week of the decidedly un-merry month of May:

• He falsely accused a cable TV host of murder, at the same time causing the family of the deceased greater pain and more suffering.
• He pulled the US out of the World Health Organization in the midst of a global health emergency.
• He encouraged law enforcement to shoot Americans looting stores during the nationwide protests of George Floyd’s murder.
• He claimed that violent protesters are from the “radical, Antifa left,” citing no evidence, and said nothing about the surge in white supremacist social media polemics urging violence.
• He threatened DC protesters with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.”
• He falsely claimed that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser kept DC Police away from the White House demonstrations. They were there.
• He invited his supporters to confront protesters at the White House.
• He went to war with Twitter after the social media site labeled some of his tweets misleading (only two of his 84 lies for the week).
• He demanded that North Carolina allow the Republican convention to proceed with no masks or social distancing.
• He refused to wear a face mask in public in contravention of his own White House guidelines while ridiculing Joe Biden for wearing a face mask.
• He gratuitously insulted Stacy Abrams regarding her weight.
• He tweeted that Nancy Pelosi has a drinking problem (she doesn’t drink).
• He said “MAGA loves the Black people” (this from the Birther-Conspirator-in-Chief whose racist diatribes have continued).
• He said next to nothing about coronavirus deaths passing 100,000.
• He continued to promote a ridiculous, evidence-free “Obamagate” conspiracy.
• He re-tweeted a video of a man saying ”the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
• He continued to falsely claim that absentee voting is rife with fraud.
• He threatened to eliminate the U.S. Postal Service.
• He said he wanted to invite our Russian enemy back into the G-7.
• He played two rounds of golf when not tweeting his lies and rages.

 
Trump’s entire attention was on these sickening stunts and shenanigans, anything to distract attention from the health emergency and resulting economic collapse that he has grossly mismanaged, and the challenging issues raised by Floyd’s murder. Instead of stepping up when leadership was desperately needed, he went AWOL, resorting to ridicule, insults, lies and avoidance of responsibility along with megadoses of distraction, deflection and distortion.
 
And how did Trump begin the following week? By stewing over reports of him retreating to the White House bunker during protests. To show what a macho man he is, he ordered federal law enforcement (the Park Police, Secret Service, DC National Guard, U.S. Marshals et al.) to use pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades to clear the 100 percent peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park so that he and his spineless sycophants—Barr, Esper and General Milley among others—could strut across to St. John’s Church for a nauseating photo-op of him standing in front of the church holding up a Bible. This is what we get instead of leadership.
 
I had the good fortune twice to work for bosses who epitomized real leadership. They instilled a sense of purpose in their organizations and employees; they had carefully thought-out goals; they inspired their people; they planned, including contingency and backup planning; they never disparaged or insulted anyone; they were disciplined; they worked hard; they were empathetic; they consoled when necessary; they took responsibility and were accountable for mistakes; and they never let their personal interests get in the way of our missions. They possessed all the leadership qualities that Donald Trump lacks.
 
So here we are, stuck with a fatally flawed and failed, insecure creature who regrettably still has many months to go at the increasingly unstable tiller of the ship of state he is doing so much to sink. The damage he could inflict in his remaining tenure could be even worse than what he has wrought so far.
 
Dick Hermann
June 5, 2020

“On some great and glorious day…the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.”
 --H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
 
And here we are. It took almost a century for Mencken’s prediction in all its horror to come to pass. It is not totally shocking that a political party that has spent almost the last half-century attacking government and disdaining truth, science and expertise and that tried to position a Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the presidency would nominate a con man with no sense of decency. What is astonishing is that so many millions of Americans fall for his lies and cruelty.
 
People who scorn the sober advice of healthcare professionals in favor of someone who advocates ingesting bleach, taking risky medications, and eschewing masks and social distancing are playing a very dangerous game, one that could kill a number of them, their loved ones and others. Turning wise counsel into a culture war and political statement is reprehensible. Defiance of good judgment in the pursuit of so-called freedom is just plain foolish.
 
What is even more head-scratching is that these fervent Trump cultists don’t understand that their idol doesn’t care a whit about what happens to them. This is all about him and his re-election. If thousands of his supporters die as a consequence, it won’t affect him in the least. By giving him a pass, they are risking their own lives while endorsing the train wreck he is making of America and the planet.
 
When not pulling all-nighters tweeting insanities, inanities and incendiaries, Donald Trump is busy dismantling our leadership role in the world, decimating democratic values and the rule of law, making Americans’ lives miserable and costing us tens of thousands of our fellow citizens. All in the pursuit of petulance and re-election, not necessarily in that order.
 
But this big, top-of-the-fold stuff is not all that Trump is doing to destroy lives and livelihoods. For example, he was about to do even more damage, sub rosa because it contradicted his usual fake, chickenhawk concern for “our great military” that he fought so vigorously to avoid joining back in the day. It was only due to tremendous push-back from both blue and red state governors that he backed off. His latest war on decency took the form of trying to end the deployment of our National Guard currently on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis--one day before they become eligible for federal retirement and education benefits. After 90 days of active duty, Guardsmen fighting the pandemic would have their service count toward the benefits they deserve. But Trump wanted to end their deployment at 89 days. This is yet another example of the heartless cruelty at the center of his warped, soulless governing philosophy.
 
A president’s NUMBER ONE job is to keep Americans safe. Screwing the National Guard is just a small indicator of his disinterest in and inability to do that. Trump’s mammoth failure goes light years beyond that of any prior president. His botching of the job is historic and catastrophic and is a firable offense. November cannot come fast enough.
 
Dick Hermann
May 29, 2020

​Guess what! Suddenly, congressional Republicans are concerned about deficits and debt. This was one of the bedrock principles of what used to be the Republican Party before it mutated into the Trump Cult. Naively, I thought that after appropriating $3 trillion for Covid-19 relief, even the old codgers who cling to power under the guise of the GOP had finally, after 100 years, seen the Keynesian light, i.e., that the way to combat an economic downturn is to increase government spending.
 
But no, it is not to be. Mitch McConnell and even Donald Trump, whose ignorance of basic economics is exceeded only by his staggering historical illiteracy, are, voilà, suddenly worried about running up the national debt. This is, of course, after these characters pushed through a $2 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations in the days when coronavirus was still percolating only in bats. And that was on top of an equally large tax cut that Bush 43 gift-wrapped for the usual Republican suspects back in the aughts.
 
It’s instructive to look at what World War II cost America and compare it to today: The war cost $4.1 trillion in 2020 dollars. If you subtract the sale of war bonds, which covered 63 percent of the cost, you are left with $1.517 trillion in war debt (in 2020 dollars) at the end of the conflict, which amounted to 329 percent of GDP (without even considering the federal government’s non-war debt). Compare that to today, when even adding in $3 trillion (so far) of Covid-19 expenditures, total public debt adds up to 128 percent of GDP. We have a very long way to go before we arrive at World War II debt-to-GDP ratios.
 
What Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Congress understood back then was that a nation facing an existential crisis must spend whatever it takes to survive. Trump and McConnell and their clueless colleagues clearly do not understand that and we are the ones who will suffer the consequences.
 
By saving the country, the West and democracy back then, the money invested in the war was money well spent. Moreover, after the war, the wise growth policies pursued by the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations brought that ratio down to pre-war levels by 1962. The 30 years of robust economic growth that followed the war give the lie to Trump’s spurious claims of creating “the greatest economy in history.”
 
We need to spend whatever it takes to assure our physical and economic survival. Anything less is a dereliction of duty and risks a societal devastation from which we might never recover.
 
Dick Hermann
May 22, 2020

​Donald Trump has declared victory over the coronavirus and turned his total attention to the one thing that consumes every millisecond of his existence: doing whatever is necessary to advance the well-being of Donald Trump. In the present circumstance, that means reopening the economy in hopes of generating a “V-shaped recovery,” perhaps his best hope of winning re-election.
 
For Trump, who is utterly incapable of nuance, every decisional calculus is the same: Will it help me or hurt me? That is as abstract as his thinking gets.
 
Consequently, the White House wrecking ball that has wreaked so much havoc and done so much damage for the last three-and-a-half years is now hurtling down on the heads of every American, confronting us with a Hobson’s choice of risking our jobs vs. risking our health. He, Vice President Pence and key White House staffers get tested daily for Covid-19. A positive test is followed immediately by extensive contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. The other 327 million Americans don’t need any of that, proclaims the president. Let them eat ventilators.
 
There are ways to reopen the economy safely without sacrificing the health, safety and lives of the public. A number of states are attempting to do that by introducing the same extensive safety measures that the White House has instituted for its favored few. What is holding them back is that there are not enough testing kits thanks to the Trump administration’s monumental failure to provide them.
 
Trump’s inability to see grays or subtleties has other negative consequences. He refuses to wear a mask because his Fox News propagandists tell him it makes him look weak and gives the impression that his “victory” over the virus might be a Pyrrhic one (you think?). Instead of modeling safe behavior for the citizenry, he demonstrates recklessness. The effect of this is that his locked-in base concludes that masks aren’t necessary, thus risking themselves and everyone with whom they come in contact to possible exposure to Covid-19 and its life-threatening consequences.
 
Instead of leading by example, Trump gives us lies, distortions, insults, raging tweetstorms, self-adulation, and complaints about not being sufficiently praised by governors and the media. Worse, this is compounded by his intellectual laziness, incompetence, moral bankruptcy and failure to step up to the plate and make even a pretense of understanding what is going on and lead us out of this catastrophe. Thus, with only 4 percent of the world’s population, we account for almost one-third of the global total of Covid-19 illnesses and just under one-third of the planet’s deaths. By any measure, we are doing worse than any of the other 33 developed nations in combatting the virus. Welcome to the Third World. He won’t own up to it, but there is only one place and one individual to which the finger of blame points for this disastrous performance.
 
With Trump at the helm, it is certain to get worse.
 
Dick Hermann
May 15, 2020

​Any lingering doubts that Donald Trump, his Senate partner-in-crime Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party are, despite their protestations, no friends of working men and women can finally be laid to rest. Trump and his political enablers have been playing white blue collar workers for years now, a cynical game that is the successor to the “Southern Strategy,” the brainchild of Richard Nixon that was key to his, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes and Trump’s electoral victories. That tactic effectively exploited Southern white fear of and anger about the civil rights movement. Trump took that to another level by pretending to sympathize with the fears, anger and grievances of white blue collar workers left behind by a changing global economy. The fact that he cares not at all for them is evident in his willingness to trade their illnesses and deaths for a re-election strategy.
 
Trump’s executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to compel beef, pork and poultry processing plants to reopen is a direct assault on workers’ health and lives. No industry’s workers have suffered more from Covid-19 infections than these individuals. Nationwide, more than 5,000 have contracted Covid-19 and the death toll keeps mounting. In one Iowa meat packing plant, 58 percent of the tested labor force was positive, forcing the plant to close. Similar plants have closed all over the country because of the rapid spread of the virus in the close working conditions in these plants where social distancing is virtually impossible. What Trump has done is to force this underpaid workforce that processes our food to choose between their jobs and their lives.
 
The rationale for the executive order is “to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans.“ This ignores that there are plenty of alternative protein sources, including eggs, cheese and other dairy, seeds such as Quinoa, soy and many other plant-based products.
 
The executive order references the joint guidance (i.e., suggestions, not mandates) for meat processors issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The opening paragraph of the guidance document tells you all you need to know about how effective this is likely to be in protecting worker health: “…workers may be permitted to continue work following potential exposure to COVID-19, provided they remain asymptomatic and additional precautions are implemented to protect them and the community.” One such precaution being implemented is providing workers with only one facemask a week. These facemasks are supposed to be for one-time use only and then discarded.
 
Meat processing is a close-order occupation. It is by its nature a highly dangerous environment. That is not going to change.
 
Worse, the executive order directs the U.S. Department of Labor to issue regulations protecting plant owners from liability if workers who return to the job come down with Covid-19. In other words, if you get sick and perhaps die because you returned to work, you or your heirs have no recourse.
 
Senate Majority Leader McConnell wants to take corporate liability protection to the next level and confer it across-the board on all employers. Fortunately, the House of Representatives will not go along with the sycophantic Senate Republicans whose contempt for the very people they and Trump profess to champion appears to know no bounds. However, that does not mean that McConnell won’t use this existential threat to workers as a negotiating ploy during the next round of relief bills to be considered by Congress. House Democrats may be pressured to give in on liability in return for getting some relief for desperate states and municipalities strapped for money to pay essential public sector laborers like cops, fire fighters, teachers, transit employees and sanitation workers. Trump and McConnell’s war on workers includes them, too.
 
When faced with doing good vs. doing harm, so far Trump and McConnell always choose the latter. The war on America’s workers is just the latest example of this tragic truism.
 
Dick Hermann
May 8, 2020

“…among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
       -Declaration of Independence
 
There is a reason why “Life” leads the list of “unalienable rights” specified in the Declaration of Independence. No reopening of the economy can proceed safely without first paying attention to survival.
 
Since the Trump administration has fallen down on its core responsibility to keep Americans safe, it falls to governors, mayors and city managers to step into the federal breach and assume responsibility for getting us through this catastrophe with as little damage to health and the economy as possible. Testing, which has become the poster child for the Trump government’s epic fail, is still woefully inadequate after two-plus months of lackluster attempts and a bodyguard of blatant administration lies beginning with Trump’s March 9 CDC visit when he claimed that “anyone who needs a test can get a test.” That was not true then and it’s not true now. While other countries test vast swaths of their populations, the United States cannot.
 
We hear a great deal of mumbo jumbo every day at Trump’s surreal press conferences about testing, mainly lies about test availability and unwarranted self-praise for the feeble number of tests being conducted. The real story about testing is that it is yet another of the many areas where the Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot manage the Covid-19 crisis. Again, the absence of federal competence means that it is up to state and local leaders instead. But testing is only the first step in the process of re-opening the nation and rebuilding our decimated economy. Contact tracing is the crucial next step.
 
Contract tracing means the ability to identify people who may have been in contact with someone who tests positive so that they can get treatment, be monitored, quarantined and kept from spreading the infection to others. The Trump administration, incredibly, has no plan for contact tracing, yet another epic fail. As with everything else concerning the virus, the buck has been passed to the states.
 
South Korea understood this necessity from its first alert (the same day as the U.S.) that a pandemic was imminent. The country immediately took steps to implement widespread testing and contact tracing, and the results have been impressive. Similarly, Taiwan and Germany have demonstrated competence in combatting the virus. By their quick responses, all three countries put the U.S. to shame.
 
States, municipalities and tribes need to act now to put effective contact tracing programs in place and not rely on the inept Trump government to perform any function essential to this process. That means hiring and training an army of contact tracers and providing them with the resources and protocols they will need to do this incredibly important job effectively. While a competent federal government would task the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with recruitment and training of contact tracers—these two basic functions are OPM’s bread-and-butter—this won’t happen because Trump and his sycophants live in the moment. Judgment and planning are beyond them. It will be up to lower levels of government to get this right.
 
Successful foreign models (e.g., South Korea, Germany) for recruiting, training and managing contact tracers should be consulted and applied here. The Trump administration’s unreasoning hostility to anything foreign should not deter governors and mayors from directly contacting the knowledgeable authorities in those countries and learning from them how to conduct an effective contact tracing program. At a minimum, it should include:

• The basics of contact tracing
• Interviewing skills
• Key questions to ask
• Likely questions to answer
• Quarantine monitoring and follow-up
• Health information privacy and confidentiality
• Cultural sensitivity
• Communicating with the hearing-impaired
• Reporting requirements
• Continuous coaching and mentoring for quality improvement
• Technology

 
There is no percentage in delaying contact tracing program implementation in hopes that the Trump administration will get its act together. It won’t. States, cities and tribes must act now or suffer the life-and-death consequences.
 
Dick Hermann
May 1, 2020