Category: Politics

The United States Postal Service (USPS): where to begin? A national treasure founded by the legendary Benjamin Franklin. A lifeline which literally delivered life-changing news: college acceptance (or denial), love letters between spouses separated by work or travel, family updates and sweetheart encouragements from home to distant soldiers. Calls to mind dedicated civil servants, deterred by “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.” A path to the middle class and the American dream for millions of employees, many veterans, all over the country.

And dead on its feet. A veritable “dead (post)man walking.” Or in the dry language of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), “unsustainable.”

The sad truth is the USPS as it is today can not long survive. Some seek to kill it and privatize its work. Others want to solve the problem by simply giving it more money. I favor neither. But before we jump to solutions, let’s understand the problem.

Everybody “knows” the Postal Service, but what do you really know about it? It has 600,000 employees (100,000 veterans) and 600,000 retirees and is an independent agency of the executive branch. As a civilian, it looks like a government outfit; as a federal retiree, I can say it looks that way to me, too. But it is very different. It receives no annual federal funding (some say “no tax dollars” but that is a mistake). Both Congress and the Executive Branch influence its day-to-day operations in numerous ways (just try to close a post office building and see how). Its employees have the same job security and nonpartisan rules (Hatch Act) as other federal employees, and get the same generous retirement and health benefits. They run a retail network larger than McDonalds/Starbucks/WalMart combined, own and operate over 200,000 vehicles and deliver almost half of the world’s mail (more on this curious fact later).

USPS was helped by its status as a government monopoly, but technology has proven to be a grave danger. Once upon a time, it was the only reliable way to get something from here to there. Over time, the mandate to provide daily delivery to every home and business in America changed from blessing to curse. New, more nimble rivals (UPS, FedEx, DHL) could run the numbers and start winning the more lucrative routes, and leave the less desirable ones to the Post Office. And then along came e-mail, e-commerce, e-business.

The USPS has run a deficit every year since 2007. Wait, if USPS does not receive annual federal appropriations, but they run short of money, who pays the bill? They can’t borrow from a bank, nor do they have investors like a private business. Sometimes they use funds they should set aside to fund pensions. Also, the Federal government gives USPS a line of credit to spend on things like new infrastructure or life-cycle replacement of vehicles/computers. And USPS has been dipping into it to do all that, and to cover operating expenses. Well, someone has to pay the postman, too. And you do.

But wait, some say, isn’t the cause of the annual USPS operating deficit the fact that the government makes it ‘prepay 75 years of retiree benefits in advance, a rule no other government agency of private business has to comply with (sic)‘? What this Tweet refers to is the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, passed without objection by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Bush (43). Prior to this law, USPS made its own rules on how it pre-funded pensions, and set aside no funding for retiree health benefits. Private companies can always cut benefits or simply go bankrupt and default on pension and health benefits. The federal government recognized if the Post Office ever failed, someone would have to keep paying its retirees’ pensions and health plans, and that would be (again): you.

This was not unusual, since the federal government was likewise concerned about generous federal pensions and health benefits and started trying to raise contributions and reduce benefits at the same time. But now the USPS suddenly had to account for its large funding shortfall; they tried for three years, then decided to stop paying the pre-funding requirement for health benefits. So since 2010, they have defaulted on this obligation every year, and since they paid no money, it can not have affected their annual deficits. The USPS unfunded liabilities are now double their annual revenues. If they were a business, they would be defunct.

The real reason for the USPS deficit is one you already know: who mails a letter anymore? The USPS infrastructure was built for a time when they were the main way to get goods and info to the last mile (your mailbox). That is no longer the case. USPS total mail volumes started declining in 2007 (due to competition, technology, and the Great Recession) and haven’t stopped, generating losses every year. Marketing (aka junk) mail has grown to one-half of Post Office deliveries, even though its cheap rates mean it generates only one-quarter of revenues. Yes, the USPS delivers half of the world’s mail because it delivers the tons (literal) of trash you (like I once did) throw directly into the trashcan next to your mailbox.

The Post Office tries to reduce operating expenses, but as I pointed out earlier, there are both political and labor (union) issues with doing so. USPS has improved productivity almost every year, but improving a failing business model will not succeed. Somewhere the world’s best buggy whip maker can explain why that is so.

However, unsustainable is not the same thing as hopeless. If the USPS keeps operating as is, or simply relies on an infusion of federal dollars (or a relaxation of its unfunded liabilities, which must eventually be paid), it will ultimately fail. What needs to be done? I do have ideas about this.

End six days a week delivery. Who needs daily mail delivery? Only one percent of Social Security recipients get checks by mail, and that’s once a month. Even those vulnerable, at-home seniors don’t get drugs delivered every day. Splitting delivery into three-days-a-week zones (Mon/Wed/Fri, Tue/Thu/Sat) would halve the delivery burden.

Return to postal boxes where appropriate. Way back when, USPS only delivered mail to local post offices in cities, then people walked to the post office to get mail when they wanted it. Add in mandatory electronic notification (they already have this as an option) when you have mail (and what it is).

Consolidate postal offices. Like military bases, start a commision which decides what stays and what goes. Sometimes it is more cost effective to keep a remote site, sometimes not. Let a nonpartisan, business-oriented commission make the call. Perhaps the USPS could generate one-time revenue by the sales of some choice locations.

Encourage retirement. USPS does this occasionally, and it’s time again. Offering early retirement and retirement bonuses can help. In the end, a retiree costs less than an employee, and if you reduce service, you need fewer employees.

Double the price of junk mail. By the rules of price elasticity, this might decrease the volume by half, which would be a good thing. If the volume reduction is less, it would actually increase net revenue!

Publish data on package delivery costs. Post Office public data cites how much package volume they deliver and the revenue, but not the associated costs. It’s true they are often the lowest cost option for packages, but if they are losing money on every package, well then, the punchline to the old joke is “they’ll make up for it in volume.”

Invest pension/health funds in other instruments. Currently these USPS funds can only invest in ultra-safe Treasury funds. Like the Federal Thrift Savings Program (TSP), let USPS invest in other safe, but far more lucrative funds.

All of the above are in the category of putting out the fire, pumping out the water, and keeping the USPS afloat. But the most important issue is: What is the purpose of the United States Postal Service? If it’s to deliver what those younger than forty sneeringly call “snail-mail” to everybody’s home, it will go away. They don’t write letters, they expect Amazon or WalMart to deliver packages, they do all their business and meet all important deadlines online.

I wish I knew what the answer to this is, but I don’t. Japan’s Post Office is a monster in banking and insurance, and was once the world’s largest financial institution. Germany’s BundesPost was heavy into telecommunications before it divested into separate organizations. Perhaps there is a business model for lots of small locations and vehicles and delivery personnel that will work in today’s environment (and the future). I hope for the Post Office’s sake (and all their employees and retirees) they figure it out.

In the first two posts, we considered truth versus narrative and the power of beliefs to propel either good or bad behavior. Now is the time for Action!

Peaceful protest is good, even when it’s wrong. What do I mean by wrong? Remember, there is objective truth, and sometimes people get worked up about something that isn’t right or true. Even in that case, protest is good. Peaceful protest is putting one’s belief into action, and that is the right thing to do. I respect people who go out, get together, and make their voices heard. Not with a #hastag, not with a social media frame, with their time, blood, sweat, and tears. If you really believe in something, put away your phone and join in. If you’re a bandwagon fan, re-tweet. #virtuesignalling. That is to say, joining an online campaign is a lukewarm action: it is ok for supporting mass-transit, unacceptably lame for fighting violence or racism. Serious issues demand serious responses. Twitter is lame.

How should we protest? I suggest all protests must be peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful. This is not an original idea: you’ll notice I have borrowed conceptually from from St. Augustine’s Just War theory here. Peaceful is non-negotiable: our right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution is protected ONLY when done “peaceably.” ((The exception often voiced about armed resistance is exactly that: an exception, in that it is no longer protest, it is revolt. This is why I often chide my friends about making broad generalizations today about totalitarianism or comparisons to Nazi Germany. If you make these, and really believe it, you are morally required to take up arms (unless, of course, you’re a pacifist). Failure to act in the face of enormity is morally suspect, so be careful with sweeping generalizations. Sorry for the long aside. Back to the principles of protest.))

Peaceful, yes, but also proportionate and purposeful. Proportionate relates to the size and type: one doesn’t set oneself on fire because of an unjust parking ticket. Thousands don’t paralyze a city over determining trash collection days. Purposeful refers to the target of the protest being the correct one: if your beef is with the police, it is improper to protest at the fire department. ((Two asides in one post? Mea culpa!! I believe that Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest fails in this regard. It is peaceful and proportionate, but the National Anthem is neither the root nor cause of local police violence, so his effort is misdirected. I understand that he feels his views garner more coverage by protesting a national symbol in a mass communications event, but what that also does is invite unnecessary controversy. More importantly, when you decide to re-target your protest to gain maximum publicity, you start down the proverbial slippery slope: why not peacefully jam 911 lines to make your point?))

Violent protest, like violence in general, is evil. It is not understandable, or justified, or necessary, all terms I have heard used to describe what is happening in the States recently. What we need is not violent protest, but protest against violence. I contend that America’s basic issue is not racism, but violence: we have a violence problem.

It’s not an original thought. Back in the 60’s, an activist then-named H. Rap Brown rejected Dr. King’s non-violent approach, and espoused black violence with the slogan “violence is as American as cherry pie.” I think he was right for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t racism when a veritable rainbow coalition of police officers murdered George Floyd. It wasn’t racism when a line of white riot cops knocked down and rendered unconscious an old white pacifist. It wasn’t racism when a slew of federal agencies cleared peaceful protestors out of a public park with pepper spray. It wasn’t racism when someone decided to try to execute two black cops in New York City. It wasn’t racism when people of color and pasty white suburban dudes looted stores together. It’s violence.

Think about it. Other cultures remark on America’s tendency to violence and it does stand out. We relish American football when it is at its most violent. When we play what the rest of the world calls football, they criticize us as unskilled and “too physical.” Our heroes are most often men of action who stand up and fight, often viciously. Take that tendency to violence and a constitutional right to bear arms and what do you get? More gun violence than anywhere else, including other nations that are heavily armed. More armed robberies and violent assaults. More road rage. People fighting over sales in stores. People screaming at diners in restaurants. Violence.

Solutions?

Let’s start with the problem du jour: not police racism, but police violence. Demilitarize the police. They have added ever-more elaborate weapons and riot control gear at the same time the crime rate has plummeted. Go back to community policing, which puts cops on the streets not looking to pad statistics but in a non-adversarial role. Camden, New Jersey, did this with solid results. In what moral order is a choke hold still a police policy option? Pass rules requiring officers to intervene immediately in the case of active violations by fellow officers. Require training for recruits coming from a military background on the differences between the two cultures. Don’t bust up police unions, but perhaps make them liable for on-duty crimes committed by their members, thus turning the blue wall of silence into a self-policing community. And for God’s sake, stop the “defund police” nonsense. People who were screaming about the President’s defunding of WHO during a pandemic are calling for defunding the police during riots? Can we be intellectually consistent for a few moments here?

Protestors? Peaceful, Proportionate, Purposeful. Immediately turn in anyone fomenting violence (which has sometimes happened recently, but nowhere near enough). And no more quick bail/dropped charges: violate the order and go into lock up and face full prosecution (remember, this would only apply to those inciting or committing violence). It would be nice if the slogans protestors used bore some relation to the truth, since the slogans tend to become part of a narrative, and I think I showed how dangerous false narratives can be.

Government? Spend more effort on stopping violence and less on the motives of the violent. I don’t care whether Officer Chauvin was a racist or not: he needs to be tried (and convicted) of murder. I don’t care whether the people throwing Molotov cocktails or looting stores are animal liberationists, boogaloo boys, or anarchists: charge and convict them for their actions. In general, government at all levels should seek de-escalation during protests. This isn’t even 1968, let alone Shay’s Rebellion. Leave the Insurrection Act for when it is needed. It is not needed today.

Citizens? Be active. Protest if it really means something to you. I disagreed with the gun-toters protesting CoVid19 restrictions a few weeks past, but they were peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful: have at it! Police your fellow protestors. Just make sure you’ve done your homework (find the truth, not the narrative) and you always approach your effort from love. What about the “we’re really facing evil this time, it’s different” claim? Check your narrative bias. The civil rights movement faced an entrenched system of racism backed by dogs, guns, and fire hoses. It won by facing all this hate and violence with love, cementing support from Americans who couldn’t stand to be on the other side any longer. Think it’s worse today? Where’s that data? Is it worse today than in 1852? I’ll give the last word* to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who ended Uncle Tom’s Cabin thusly:

There is one thing that every individual can do,—they can see to it that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? Or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?

* This quote was brought to my attention by Dale M. Coulter in a recent First Things essay. Lincoln allegedly said to Stowe “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

PS. If you think I am overstating the danger of narrative, consider this: Uncle Tom, the protagonist of Ms. Stowe’s masterpiece, is a hero. He is a model of quiet dignity and refusal to respond with violence to violence. In the book, his example even elicits grudging admiration from his slave masters. In the world of the 19th century, his example won over countless people who previously were on the fence about slavery. During the civil rights movement, those espousing violence started a narrative that such a peaceful response to evil was a cop-out, and turned the character’s name into an epithet, which is what it is to this day.

In part I we focused on truth versus narrative. Now, let’s turn to belief.

Beliefs can be profound or casual. Let’s focus on deeply-held beliefs here. The casual ones will come up again in Part III, about Action. Suffice it to say you can always tell the difference. To borrow a sports analogy, if someone says they are a fan of a team, but they don’t watch the team, attend games, or know the players, they aren’t much of a fan: they have a casual belief in the team. They’re known as bandwagon fans; nobody likes bandwagon fans.

Our beliefs (in general) come from our experiences. You can be given a belief system (say from your parents), but if your experiences don’t confirm that system, you will reject it. Belief can become a powerful force, shaping how we view future experiences, and thus creating a vicious cycle: we see only what we want to see. A police officer who arrests criminals all day starts to see criminals everywhere, not fellow citizens. A young black man constantly told he will be mistreated by the police might act rashly when confronted by officers, providing the excuse for that mistreatment. You can find evidence of this daily. A President who sees any criticism as a personal attack becomes unable or unwilling to admit a mistake, however trivial.

Yet belief can also be the force for a virtuous cycle: ignoring the harmful, rejecting the hateful, and focusing always on the good, which then elicits a positive outcome . . . in the fullness of time. It was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s nonviolence which eventually won the day; it was he who said “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” This emphasis on non-violence and love works because it is in accord with the truth. Violence may make progress in the short run, and hatred or rage may feel good for a sort period of time, but in the end, they are futile.

Some people believe that the American system is inherently racist. Some people believe that American police forces are racist. These beliefs stem from a experiences that, while real, are not true. Data deny them. I have lived in three countries, studied and visited many more. Every one which with I am familiar has a problem with racism. I endured lectures from my European friends about the racism of Americans only until their sisters were dating black US GIs. Sweden was a progressive racial utopia until it admitted dissimilar refugees. The Soviet Union? Read about the experience of African communists there. Asia? Perhaps the most brutally racist area of all, although many times its racism hides behind a polite smile. Mexico? Check out the furor over last year’s indigenous star of the movie Roma.

I am not arguing American racism is an illusion; rather, it is inherent in the human condition. We have a natural experiment in history to help understand this. The Republic of South Africa was the one country in modern times to believe in and enact a policy of state-sanctioned racism: apartheid. From this, we know what an inherently racist system looks like. A black RSA President was impossible to fathom under apartheid. Black athletes, black cultural stars, black academics, black professionals, black leaders: unlikely. All things modern America has enjoyed. Understanding the role racism plays–as a universal problem–is key to the way forward.

Likewise, those who see any criticism, any protest, any resistance to the current administration or the American system as unjustified, un-American, or treasonous are also wrong. They clutch at unfair criticism–which there is plenty–and reject all criticism. The MAGA crowd, the press, and the President have something in common: they believe it is all about Trump. It’s not. And we can’t get to the root of the problem until we get past that misapprehension.

Like Dr. King, I am not arguing for passive acceptance, or standing by idly and waiting for change. I am arguing that in order to make change, you must first accept truth, remove the blinders of your narrative, and love one another, unconditionally. Any other approach will end with more fear, more hatred, and more recriminations and revenge. That sets the stage for Action, my final post in this series, tomorrow.

There is so much emotion out there right now: pain, hate, fear & loathing. As a friend recently reminded me, catharsis has its use. If there is a time for all things (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), then there is a time for rage, too. But then, too, “let us stop talking falsely now, the hour’s getting late.” (Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower)

When the dust settles and the smoke clears, we must put down our signs, our bricks and bottles, our tear gas and shields, and reason once again. In the end, there are truth, belief, and action; the first of these is truth.

Truth matters. There is only one truth, not your truth or my truth. We each have experiences which can be (in fact, always are) different. But there is objective truth. The truth is that a man was apprehended, then needlessly and intentionally murdered. Another truth is that thousands of people of all races and nations are so upset by this fact that they are peacefully protesting. A third truth is that a not insignificant number of people joining the protests are then fomenting violence, ending in destruction of property, looting, and violence to both police and innocent bystanders.

The problems start when we stop worrying about truth and start considering the term in vogue today: narrative. We used to call this a meta-story, or spin, or even propaganda. Narrative places truth at the service of a larger idea. This idea then colors how we understand the truth, sometimes directly undermining it. Which is dangerous.

How does it work?

If you’re a progressive, your narrative includes the ideas that the American system is fundamentally racist, that blind justice is not justice at all, that the system is rigged against minorities. The murder of George Floyd typifies an epidemic of police violence against African-Americans, the arrests at protests the willful authoritarianism of the American police state. Looting is the act of clandestine cells of Boogaloo boys or the understandable outrage boiling over after centuries of mistreatment and marginalization.

If you sport a MAGA hat, the suspect was a defrauder. You scan his autopsy for the tell-tale signs of alcohol or drugs and presume he resisted arrest. The protests are either the beginning of a race war or a carefully-staged provocation funded and organized by George Soros to undermine the President’s re-election. AntiFa is the cause of violence; looting is what bad people always do, given the opportunity.

Exaggerations? Hardly! I would provide links to these views, but then I don’t want to encourage their spread. But they are legion. You may have visited a site espousing them.

How do such narratives undermine the truth? Mr. Floyd was only a suspect–not a criminal–there is no evidence he ever resisted anything except to beg to be allowed to breathe. If you want to check the data on police violence, the Washington Post and The Guardian have the best data sets: but you won’t find evidence to support an epidemic against minorities. Believe it or not, the numbers haven’t increased for years. As to the protests, most were peaceful, and while no one doubts outside instigators were behind some of the violence, there is no evidence of a vast, coordinated conspiracy. As it happens, there was violence at protests long before the Boogaloo movement or AntiFa existed. It happens when masses of emotional people get together.

What both sides get wrong is their reliance on narrative in place of truth. See how the man, George Floyd, gets lost in the narrative? He becomes a symbol, a prop, a cudgel used to bash a competing narrative.

What was the simple truth? A man was accused of committing a misdemeanor crime. He was murdered, without resistance, by the police after being apprehended. All four policemen involved were fired twenty-eight hours after his death. None of the officers involved cooperated in the investigation (i.e., they all pled the Fifth Amendment), thus prolonging it. The policeman directly responsible for his murder was charged within four days. The other officers were charged five days later, and the initial charges upgraded to murder in the second degree. According to the Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, the decision to charge and the timing of those charges were unrelated to the protests. Don’t believe him? Google him and try to stick him in your narrative.

When people replace truth with narrative, bad things happen. People start to believe in narrative the way that honest people believe in truth. And that can have terrible consequences. Which leads to Part II on Belief.

If you never watched the original cartoon Rocky & Bullwinkle, you missed something good, so go find it on YouTube or Cartoon Network. If you did watch (like me), you’ll remember the original Sherman and the talking dog, Mr. Peabody, who had various historical adventures using the WABAC (Way-back, get it?) time machine.

As I was writing the last blog post on media bias, I had a WABAC moment: what was the media coverage like during the last pandemic: the 2009 H1N1 or Swine flu outbreak. To remind, this virus was a new strain of the infamous Spanish Flu bug which terrorized the world in 1919-1921. This time, it lasted about twenty months. Note this: confirmed cases worldwide were 1.6 million, deaths 18,000; estimated cases were 700 million to 1.4 billion with 284,000 deaths. Yes, ten years later, we still can’t narrow down the data within an order of magnitude. That might give some pause, even today, when making instant judgments about the coronavirus. But I digress.

H1N1 hit within the first hundred days of the Obama Administration, right next door in Mexico, oh, and simultaneously with that pesky little Great Recession. So I began searching the paper of record, the New York Times, to see how it covered the administration’s response and unfolding crisis.

Was I in for a surprise!

You will want to read the hyperlinks on this one. What I found was telling, in the “I can’t believe I’m reading this” way. My comments below are italicized.

Early on (in April) The Times published an opinion piece by a doctor entitled “Sound the alarm? The Swine Flu bind” noting “History teaches that the influenza virus mutates to cause worldwide spread about twice a century, on average. But scientists have yet to figure out what causes the mutations, when they will occur and what makes certain viruses more lethal than others.” and that public officials faced a damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don’t decision. Oh for that sane, balanced perspective today!

On May 1st, the Times noted how seriously the Obama administration was taking the threat. The Times reported the President was deliberate in trying not to cause a panic:”It was no coincidence, his aides said, that he played golf the day his administration declared a national emergency.” Oddly enough, no reporter asked about the recently eliminated NSC staff position covering infectious disease. Yes, believe it or not, it happened first way back then, but no one seemed to care. Golf as a crafty signal: yes, that’s it!

White House spokesman Robert Gibb was asked about the fact that there was no Health and Human Services Secretary and only five Presidential nominees (out of twenty positions, none confirmed) in the department, he said “‘Our response is in no way hindered or hampered.’ When pressed to say whether White House officials would prefer to have a full team in place, he said, ‘We’d rather not have a swine flu.'” There was no follow-up on how the Department could possibly be effective without any appointees, nor any opinion from the Times.

Asked about Mexico’s more drastic actions responding to the outbreak, CDC acting director Richard Besser said “You don’t know if this is a virus that will fizzle in a couple of weeks or one that will become more or less virulent or severe in the diseases it causes.” Perhaps President Trump should have suggested the coronavirus may “fizzle.” That appears to be the scientifically appropriate term, or at least no one in the media objected when the CDC head used it.

Another Times story the day after the US declared a public health emergency noted that “only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case” and that Besser “praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.” Only two labs, but no follow up about why, or when would more come on line? And no questions about the lack of a national policy? Enquiring minds apparently didn’t want to know!

In October, HHS Secretary Sebelius was asked to account for the fact that only 23 million of the 120 million promised doses of vaccine were available, she responded, “If we could wave a magic wand or have the tools in our government shop to fix this, I think there would be a different expectation.” Noticeably absent from the questions was any mention of the Defense Production Act of 1950, which was ready and available for use. Maybe it grew into a magic wand later?

Regarding that shortage, the Times created a helpful video explaining that it was due to “old technology” and “an inefficient process.” The video says the federal government “responsibly” contracted with all five vaccine producers, but “in a weird confluence” all five had problems. “Some people will die” due to the vaccine shortage, the video intones, and the federal government has confirmed that. That’s it. Nobody at fault? People will die. Move along now.

When the President’s daughters got the coveted, in short-supply vaccine shots, the Times did cover it by saying, “The vaccinations could raise questions about whether the Obama girls were given special treatment” but quickly noting “The White House may be trying to set a good example amid concerns about the vaccine’s safety. Sharing the news that the president has allowed his daughters to receive the shots could ease the fears of ordinary Americans who are wondering whether to get vaccinated.” This was simply embarrassing. President Obama’s daughters were in a high-risk group and deserved the vaccine; couldn’t the Times have left the defense to the White House Spokesman?

Finally, an otherwise irrelevant opinion piece by Gail Collins, which has this jewel: “The swine flu scare has made it clear why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden for vice president. As the White House’s unfiltered talking head, Biden is the perfect warning bell to show the White House when things are veering out of control. A kind of mental canary in the governmental mine shaft.” It also provides the following Biden story: “‘If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing,’ Biden babbled happily on the Today show. He also assured Matt Lauer that he had warned his family away from subways and that he ‘wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,’ but unfortunately Lauer did not inquire whether the Oval Office counts as free range.” This has nothing to do with my point, but I bet you a stiff drink that this quote will show up in an ad during the campaign, whenever the former Vice President attacks the President about coronavirus.

I could go on, but you get the point. Look at any of these articles (less the last one) from the paper of record and compare how the coverage was different. Assertions left unquestioned. Off-hand comments unexamined. Difficulties and challenges highlighted; failures explained away. Note I am NOT comparing how the Obama and Trump administrations performed; just how the media covered them in remarkable similar circumstances. The Obama administration response is on the books: probably a “B+” for messaging (smooth, reassuring, consistent), a “C+” for actual work (slow to enact national guidance, failure in vaccine mass production). Most importantly, the swine flu that year didn’t turn out to be the big one; extending the analogy, swine flu was a quiz, not the final.

in comparing that coverage to today’s, one could assert today’s media was only responding to the incompetence of the Trump administration, but that assertion fails because Obama’s team was new and unproven, understaffed, and made similar mistakes (e.g., reorganizing out the NSC staff position, failing to respond quickly with respect to vaccine production, making bold/rosy projections).

You might say the media treats the Trump administration differently because it acts differently. There is no doubt the President sees the media as an antagonist, if not an enemy. But this is not a personal relationship, it’s an institutional relationship. I don’t claim the media is a neutral observer; they do. If you’re going to make that claim, you forfeit the right to say “we have to be confrontational because he was first.”

Read those articles again. Read any article today. Tell me this is the rightful, impartial role for the media.

We all know how important it is (from the Times coverage) that the US has the most deaths from coronavirus. Bonus quiz, before you look at this graphic: who had the most deaths (worldwide) from the H1N1 pandemic, despite having only the fifth highest number of cases?

Of course, the Times went back and did an in-depth review of the Obama administration’s performance based on the discrepancy between how the US did and other nations. Well, I am sure they will eventually.

The New York Times masthead proudly proclaims “All the news that’s fit to print.” Some call it the newspaper of record, the official version of what’s happening, and to some extent that’s true. Some call it the home of “fake news.” I dislike the later term, only because it seems to have become shorthand for “news I don’t like.” Several friends have asked me my views about media bias. The Onion captures it well:

As I’ve said many times, everyone has bias. Bias is simply the accumulated opinion of your experiences. It’s what makes you, you. Media personalities like to claim they are unbiased, but of course they aren’t. A day does not pass that I could not find three examples of biased coverage in the news sections of the major media sources.

What does media bias look like? Much of it is subtle, shaded by determining what is news and what is deemed not news. One example:

Two marches happened in Washington DC in January: the Women’s March (January 18th) and the Annual March for Life (January 24th). Both gathered “tens of thousands” but local traffic reports confirmed the second was somewhat larger. The Times had one news report on the March for Life, one on the Women’s March. Under normal circumstances, neither of these events may be news. In this case, the President spoke at the March for Life, the first to do so (and a major change). One march had a precedent-shattering speech, which several Times opinion writers commented on; absolutely nothing of news importance happened at the other march. This even but unequal coverage represents an improvement: almost every year since 1974, generally, the only coverage the March for Life gets is arguments over the crowd size.

Earth-shattering? Hardly. I chose this example because it’s one I have been following for decades with consistent results. The media usually covers larger marches, but somehow neglects this one even when the total surpassed half a million marchers. In this case, the media determines that the views of one side aren’t newsworthy–or as newsworthy–as the other side: bias. A worse type of bias is only telling one side of a story. Try these on:

• On Saturday, March 14th, ABC’s Weekend News led with a story of chaos at US airports, as Americans fled back to the States on the eve of the President’s just announced travel ban from Europe. I was deeply interested, as I had a pending flight stateside. They repeated the story, with the same videos and images, on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Now it’s not unusual for networks to rerun stories from the weekend, as their viewership on those days is different and much lower. And the chaos was certainly newsworthy on Saturday. Except, it wasn’t newsworthy on Tuesday, or Monday, or even Sunday. Because the ICE and CBP personnel at the airports adjusted and eliminated the lines . . . before Sunday morning! In this case, the Times led its Sunday edition thusly “After a night of chaos at some of the nation’s busiest airports on Saturday, officials scrambled on Sunday, with some apparent success, to reduce lines . . .” ABC went days and days and never reported that things were fixed. How come?
• No doubt you heard about the April 15th coronavirus outbreak at the meat packing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When the national media caught the scent, they descended on the story with a vengeance: The Times cited it as the #1 coronavirus hot spot in the nation, and lamented the poor immigrants (some war refugees) who were about to lose their lives or jobs. Other media called out Smithfield Foods for endangering its workers, and ridiculed South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for resisting stay at home orders for her state. This much of the story was well covered. There was palpable glee by some that the rubes were finally getting their just desserts. What happened? Over eight hundred employees were infected, most asymptomatic. Two died. The county reported under two thousand cases and eleven deaths linked to the plant. Sioux Falls hospitals weren’t stressed. The President declared the industry vital and the employees are cautiously getting back to work with new policies. You can only find local news coverage of this part of the story.

Another bias is how much attention the media pays to a subject and why. As in:

Are you embarrassed by the President’s hawking of various treatments or cures for the coronavirus? #Metoo. Even with all the disclaimers he makes, he shouldn’t be highlighting anything that hasn’t come out of a reliable, properly conducted and peer-reviewed study. Get this! Have you heard about the positive effects of Remdesivir? The problems with Hydroxychloroquine? Clinical use of HIV/AIDs drugs? #Metoo! And all these results were initially covered extensively in national media despite being preliminary: not final, not peer-reviewed. Even the President’s ludacris observation about UV light and disinfectant: how many of you saw that press conference live (I did)? How many of you saw the clip during the entire week when the media continuously covered it? Now riddle me this: if the point is it’s dangerous for the President to say such things (because people might do something stupid), who has given more people the opportunity to do something stupid? In this case, the need to ridicule the President (however deserved) outweighed the life-and-death calculation the media claimed as the reason for the coverage.

And of course there is sensationalism:

As the US and nearly every other country on the planet begins to reopen, we’re starting to see stories like this: why we are heading into trouble reopening. This was a Times opinion piece, but it got picked up by various news sites and networks. Look at the key chart:

The point is clear: the decline in CoVid19 cases is illusory, driven by a decline in several major metropolitan areas. Now look at this chart:

During the same time period (March-May) the US went from almost no tests to over eight million tests total. And what happens, the more you test? The number of confirmed cases goes . . . up. The original opinion made no reference to it, but that’s ok, an opinion piece is trying to convince you. It’s like a lawyer’s summary, not a judge’s ruling. But then several news media outlets reprinted the chart, and made no mention of the testing issue. I did see one article where an expert commented that ‘tests had greatly increased, but that wasn’t the reason for the increase in confirmed cases.’ Now I’m willing to follow experts, but I would an explanation based on some multivariate analysis, a little less “because I said so.”

Sensationalism bias is sometimes called “if it bleeds it leads,” meaning bad news gets the headline. Some might see several of these examples as simple sensationalism. But when was the last time eleven deaths over the course of a week in South Dakota elicited front page NYT and major television network coverage? Heck, a tornado killing twice that in an hour would merit 30 seconds or a weather section article.

I have little problem with bias or partisanship in editorial or opinion pieces, (except when they then get cited by the straight news side). Television networks have news and entertainment departments, and people who get them confused have nobody but themselves to blame (if you get news from Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, good luck!). No, of course I don’t think Fox News is unbiased, either. Fox was explicitly created to provide a different bias.

Some media do better at times: look at the NYT lead on the airport chaos story: solid work! PBS NewsHour generally only displays the “what we cover” bias, so kudos to them, too. All that said, if you don’t think the media is biased, if you’re not taking all your media reporting with a big bag of salt, you’re too gullible! The key is to access multiple media sources and to know and account for their biases . . . not to believe they’re unbiased.

Coming next, an extra-special bonus: something I stumbled across while researching media bias! Stay tuned!

Can make you look foolish.

It’s starting. To be fair, it never ended, but I thought for a few brief moments sanity and restraint might rule, as the world faced a deadly virus. Perhaps people would realize that there is something more important than politics. But no.

Politicians, pundits and the talking-head classes are doing what they always do, taking credit and laying blame in the middle of a global crisis. Sadder still (to me) are the number of Facebook friends who are doing the same. You might think they would know better. But no.

There are two kinds of these instant analyses: those which hedge and identify the uncertainties and still try to make a call about what happened, and ones which grab some little factoid and run to the extreme to make a political point. Hey, pundits got to . . . pundit, right? Isn’t this what they do for a living? Don’t doctors and government officials make such statements? Yes, but no.

Emergency Room doctors have to make snap judgments with the data at hand., and they don’t always have time to explain all the assumptions under which they are working. Government leaders (and doctors speaking to the public) have to make similar policy decisions under great uncertainty, but must also appear to be confident. It is a fine art, and one which is on display (both for good and ill) right now.

Why be a tad humble, a little hesitant, a bit shy about certainty? Let me count the ways, for here is a short list of things we DO NOT KNOW about the coronavirus in particular and the crisis in general:

• How many people have been infected? Because testing is miniscule everywhere, estimates are we may be orders of magnitude (100x) wrong in our number of cases, which puts all our other data under suspicion.
• How many people have died? Seems like this would be a no-brainer, since the dead are pretty countable, but the recent addition of 3700 deaths in NYC (from nursing homes and at-home deaths) is a reminder we’re only catching the reported deaths. Eventually, we will be able to estimate total deaths much like we do for the seasonal flu, driving the total up. Silver lining: increases in deaths are a percentage, not an order of magnitude, so the net effect on the final data is to drive the case fatality rate down.
• Does infection effect immunity? For how long? Nearly every virus confers some immunity between months and years. If this coronavirus provided no immunity, we would expect to see many re-infections, since it is so infectious. We don’t see that, and those cases we do see are more like resurgence (where a person appears recovered but the same infection lingers and then rebuilds). But we still don’t know how much immunity.
• Who was patient zero and how/where/when did the virus originate and cross the species barrier? We know it was Wuhan, but China’s origin story has holes in it. Medical researchers have determined this coronavirus was not developed in a lab, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come from one. China has two labs near Wuhan. Not everybody who got sick initially was associated with the wet market in Wuhan. Some doctors who would have known more have disappeared. We essentially know almost nothing about the initial outbreak, and that is very suspicious.
• How effective are various prophylactic medicines and treatments? Still under varying trials, so again we don’t know. The President’s confidence in hydroxychloroquine is a case study is needlessly going too far: he may be wrong, he may be right. But there are consequences nonetheless.
• What are the tolerances of the many new viral/antibody tests? People scream for more and faster testing, but all new tests come with a caveat: if you want it done faster, you must accept lower tolerances and accuracy. Every country makes a decision on how “good” is good enough for their tests, with resulting implications. A false positive and someone kills himself; a false negative and somebody visits grandma and kill her. Most oversight organizations are approving tests provisionally, arguing that the data derived from the increased number of tests is more important than the accuracy of those tests. It’s an interesting approach, but understand this is another unknown.
• What policies mitigate the spread: border closures, social-distancing, business closures, stay-at-home, isolating the vulnerable, quarantine, case tracking? All do, but how much? Still unknown. We are engaged in a massive experiment as countries all over the world select from a menu of options. It seems obvious that early adopters gain an advantage in mitigation, but what happens if we have to keep the measures in place for an extended period of time? Eventually, people will cease to comply, and infections will re-ignite (see Singapore).
• What roles do demography and culture play? Undoubtedly huge, but not yet measured. Older populations will suffer more than younger ones. Smaller and more compact states should benefit, as well as places nobody wants to–or can–visit. Urban areas might be more vulnerable, but may facilitate government action and response. Authoritarian states can lock people up or intimidate them into compliance, but then they don’t tell the truth or share information well. Some peoples practice social distancing as good manners; others the reverse. Even per capita comparisons (normally used to compare dissimilar countries) will be challenged as useful data.

All of which is to say, if you see someone saying “look how well Germany is doing” or “why can’t we be like South Korea?” or “here’s what works” be cautious. We are in the first half of the coronavirus game, and we don’t even know how to count the score. When all is said and done, there will be enough good data to make real comparisons and assess performance. And there is a small glimmer of hope we will learn the right lessons, as two of the countries which apparently are doing better this time (South Korea and Taiwan) were ones which suffered under a previous contagion and spent time learning from it.

People love to make heroes and villains. But the coronavirus is serious business, not politics. If you think anything is obvious about this crisis, think again.

This is a nonpartisan post, believe it or not.

Most of the country is divided into two camps. The first camp sees an outsider President trying to “drain the swamp” and being thwarted by a conspiracy of bureaucrats dubbed “the Deep State.” The second camp sees a proto-fascist “Stable Genius” held in check by the likes of courageous, patriotic bureaucrats like the character Anonymous (insider author of articles and books about thwarting the President).

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Looking at those two statements, you might conclude that if one side is correct, the other must be wrong. This is normally the case with two apparently exclusive theses. I would like to suggest a third possibility: both are wrong, at least about the bureaucracy.

Before I do, let me state my bona fides. I worked within that federal bureaucracy for thirty-eight years. I attended nearly every available type of training for bureaucrats, from the typing course offered by the Department of Transportation (it never took!) to the Federal Executive Institute, the Harvard Seminar, and the National War College. I worked in three different Departments and an independent office. I attended countless interagency meetings from windowless rooms in Langley to the marble halls of the Old Executive Office building to the White House SitRoom. I served under every President from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama. Over half my career was in positions of executive authority, where I got to meet with leaders (political appointees and career civil service) across the government bureaucracy and help make decisions about “the sausage.”

New administrations often distrust the career bureaucrats who welcome them to power. I participated in the transition team from Bush ’43 to Obama, and I guarantee you it happened then. It is hard for some incoming political appointees and staffers to grasp the concept of a nonpartisan group of technocratic experts there to “help you.” If you come from the political world, there are two sides: the “good guys” and the opponent to be defeated. There is no room for neutrals on the sideline. It is equally difficult for political types to understand when the bureaucrats tell them “we will do every (legal) thing in our power to make your policies succeed, including telling you when they are misguided or likely to fail. But we will do so privately–to you–and not in a manner supporting any particular political perspective.” (The word “legal” in that last sentence is very important, but there are oodles of lawyers and ombuds ((I was one for thousands of analysts)) there to assist any bureaucrat who wonders where the line is–it is not a decision anyone needs to make by themselves!)

The politicos may be distrusting, yet this is exactly how the bureaucracy works. It isn’t that the bureaucrats don’t have political beliefs, and don’t bring some bias to the table. Rather, they subsume those personal views in order to support the legal–there that word is again–policies of the duly-elected or appointed officials. That is the way the federal government is supposed to work, and the way that it does work, even today . . . mostly.

So there is no Deep State. Nothing that has happened so far in the Trump administration requires a Deep State in order to be explained. What about the “Russia hoax?” I have spent hours reading every document about that story: the Steele dossier, the Mueller report, the Horowitz IG report, various FOIA releases from the DOJ, FBI, etc., the dueling reports from all the relevant House and Senate committees. What happened, if not a conspiracy to ensure Mr. Trump was never elected or impeached if he was?

Simple. A small group of FBI counterintelligence analysts and the senior executives who supervised them saw what they are always looking for: a “Tom Clancy” style Manchurian candidacy that they were going to expose and become heroes. They went after it with a passion, even skewing the FISA process and swallowing whole the dossier which is so rife with error as to be laughable. In hindsight, they got caught up in the very real Russian attempts to divide the electorate and thought they had found the super-secret pièce de résistance: a Putin mole named Donald Trump. No conspiracy, just overzealous analysts with poor leadership. There is a reason one outcome from this entire affair was the Attorney General’s decision to limit the ability of his agents to begin such an investigation of a Presidential candidacy: previously, it required nothing more than a single executive to initiate!

I have friends who share “Q” or Q Anon” material on social media, and I have yet to see a single thing which (1) makes any sense and (2) isn’t easily explainable by means other than a Deep State. I invite anyone unfamiliar with Occam’s Razor to click on the link: vast, intricate conspiracies make great novels or Netflix dramas, real life is far more mundane and explicable. Most administrations have a cadre of former government officials who can help facilitate the relationship with the bureaucracy; this one has few. Thus this administration is uniquely suited to seeing any disagreement or discussion of countervailing issues as disloyal or political. That doesn’t make it so.

By now my MAGA buddies are considering unfriending me while my Progressive amigos are high-fiving: not so fast, my friends!

Before anyone gets too excited, no one should celebrate the actions of Anonymous (the writer detailing a resistance to the administration within the bureaucracy). This is not principled action or even peaceful noncompliance. If someone in the bureaucracy disagrees with a policy, they can (1) go to the IG or ombuds and file a complaint, (2) resign, or (3) swallow it and do their job. Actively trying to undermine the policy is NOT a morally acceptable option.

For one thing, I have heard so many times that ‘what Trump just did is unconstitutional’ only to have the issue adjudicated by the courts as . . . constitutional. You may disagree with it, but you (as a bureaucrat) don’t get a say on it; the courts do. Second, I hear ‘Trump’s action is unprecedented so (I get to do something unprecedented too).’ I think we all learned how wrong this logic is in kindergarten, not to mention I often find precedents for the actions which negate the premise. Notice nothing I said suggests the policies are good or that you (as a bureaucrat) have to like them. Just they are legal and you cannot undermine them.

Furthermore, the public disclosures suggesting an active effort to thwart the administration in fact undermine the nonpartisan character of the career civil service. As I said, in the best of times, we had to convince new administrations we were there “to help.” That will be infinitely more difficult in the future. This goes double for the many former senior leaders who are so active now in media. I understand they feel the times are perilous and demand action. I ask only that they consider the long-term ramifications for the career civil service, and limit their very public criticism to when it is absolutely necessary. Which would not be every night on the round of talking-head shows.

Or publicly endorsing candidates. Think it’s not a growing problem? Check out this WaPo article. I know (and respect) many of these people. It is not that past leaders of the civil service didn’t face serious challenges. Just to keep it within living memory, Watergate anyone? Grouping together and endorsing a candidate–nay, more so explicitly opposing the sitting President–is the type of partisan activity poisonous to the standing of the bureaucracy.

It is true these individuals retain a first amendment right to offer political opinions. But not everything we HAVE the right to do IS right to do. It is one thing to imagine a hypothetical situation where only members of the civil service were privy to something, and therefore believed they had an obligation to make it public. That’s what happened with the whistleblower and subsequent impeachment. I disagreed with how serious that issue was, but not with the whistleblower making a complaint. But what we see now is political complaints coming from the bureaucracy (past or present), and it is not like there isn’t plenty of criticism already.

Some career civil servants have chosen to resign and explain their decisions publicly. This is appropriate and honorable, whether one agrees with their reasoning or not. In the end, their choices to act within the system (and leave it) support the nonpartisan nature of the civil service, even if they are publically critical.

On the other hand, there is leaking classified information. Now there’s a story citing government officials stating the intelligence community provided warning of the nature of the coronavirus and the inadequacy of China’s response back in January. Assuming this is true, kudos to the community; job well done. However, the fact that this information has now been leaked to the press? For what purpose? There is no value in this information in responding to the virus today. When we are safely past this crisis, we need an in-depth investigation of who-knew-what-when and what-did-they-do/not do. This is a leak of sensitive intelligence information solely for the purpose of criticizing the administration’s response. And some wonder why others see a conspiracy.

One side claims the public disclosures of Anonymous prove there is a Deep State, while the other side suggests it is patriotic and shows the need for active resistance by the bureaucracy. Such reasoning evinces the greater danger: the politicization of the career civil service bureaucracy, much to our collective regret.

The nonpartisan career civil service is a treasure. If you scoff at that comment, read a history of the federal government in the 19th century before civil service reform: a stinking mass of corruption and nepotism likely to ruin everything it touched. Today’s civil service is full of dedicated experts trying their best to work in the public’s interest. A real tragedy would ensue if we let our political differences lead to politicizing the federal bureaucracy: that would truly be a national disaster.