Attack On Our Democracy and Our Values

This has been the week from hell in the U.S.  We have faced multiple threats to our security and our peace: a pandemic that has crossed the threshold of 100,00 lives lost; lack of national leadership that will result in many more deaths from Covid-19 in the coming weeks; another black man killed by police using unnecessary and excessive force who has become the latest symbol of racial oppression; massive peaceful protests that have spread from Minneapolis across the U.S. and into countries around the world; looting and troublemaking during the night by white nationalists, anarchists and criminals who have infiltrated and hidden among the protestors making the police response complicated and difficult; and the final absurdity—an out of control would-be emperor launching an attack on unarmed and non-violent protestors by militarized police in full battle gear to clear the street in front of the White House so that he could have a photo op at the historic St. John’s Church.

Our democracy is not threatened by protests against excessive force used by bad cops, but it is threatened by bad cops who use the color of their uniform to treat blacks differently and with greater force than they treat whites under the same circumstance. 

The protestors held up signs and shouted: 

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot  

No Justice, No Peace  

I Can’t Breathe

I’m old enough to experience this protest with a sense of déjà vu.   In the late 1960s I witnessed our cities burned down with the frustration of decades of physical and emotional abuse of blacks.  In those days we marched with the iconic leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and while protestors marched during the day, destructive criminal elements used the chaos to torch our cities and loot our stores largely but not entirely during the night.  The looters made it hard to hear the voices of the oppressed demanding freedom, but ultimately the message got through and the Civil Rights Movement was largely successful.

 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

                                                                                          Martin Luther King, Jr   

Washington DC has a tradition of protests.  Our Constitution asserts the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition the Government for redress of grievances. Which is what they were doing—when without warning heavily armed Park Police backed up by Mounted Police fired tear gas and flash grenades and moved against the stunned protestors, pushing them off the street and out of the park.  

Why were nonviolent protestors acting within their Constitutional rights attacked?  Not because they were rioting but because the President wanted a photo opportunity for his campaign!  His staff thought a show of military force would make him appear strong and in charge, apparently to counter the fact that he spent the previous evening cowering in his bunker under the White House because he was afraid of college students protesting in Lafayette Park.

The Rector of St. John’s did not know that Trump was coming to the church for a photo op.  Trump only wanted the church and the bible as props.  He had no interest in entering the church for prayer or opening the bible.  The Episcopal Bishop of Washington was annoyed.  As reported in The Guardian she said: “Let me be clear, the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others. And I just can’t believe what my eyes have seen.”

Believe it.  Trump has no values, no principles, no integrity, no consideration for anyone but himself and his reelection.  That is why he is so dangerous and so unpredictable.  That is also why our democracy is in danger.  He is flirting with use of the 1807 Insurrection Act to send the US military to quell lawful protests by considering them a form of “insurrection.”  He got little pushback from his Republican allies.  What might he do if he sees the election slipping through his fingers?

  

"When peaceful protesters are dispersed by the order of the president from the doorstep of the people's house, the White House - using tear gas and flash grenades - in order to stage a photo op at a noble church, we can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle," Biden said in a speech in Philadelphia on June 2.

We have an alternative.  Let’s use it.

During the Pandemic Does It Make Sense To Decrease Wages of Hospital Personnel?

CBS News reported last week that hospitals have been cutting the pay of physicians and reducing nursing and other staff in their Emergency Rooms in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.  In fact there are many reports from all across our nation of wage cuts for medical staff in hospitals and group medical practices just at the time when they are most needed, the risk is high, the demand is critical, and they are being honored by the public as heroes for their commitment, Herculean efforts and life-saving skills.

In what Alice in Wonderland world does that make any sense?

By way of contrast a news article in today’s Washington Post reported that the African nation of Ghana, where Covid-19 is becoming a serious problem, announced an immediate 50% increase in wages for medical personnel, care for any staff who acquire the disease, and death benefits.

Why do we have this absurd difference in the treatment of essential personnel? 

There is an explanation.  Most hospitals today are owned by corporations and operate as business entities where profitability is the goal even in hospitals that maintain the fiction that they operate as not-for-profit entities.  Some hospitals [including my local hospital in Florida that is owned by Cleveland Clinic] contract the operation of their ER to for-profit management companies that employ physicians the way Walmart hires workers and treats them comparably.  Hospitals are “losing” money because highly profitable elective procedures have been postponed and treating those who need medical care in the ER is unprofitable.

 

Hospitals could choose to incur debt or transfer building or unrestricted funds to cover their increased operating expense, suspend executive pay during the crisis and let them volunteer, postpone the purchase of million dollar pieces of equipment, suspend construction projects temporarily, delay acquisitions for a year and focus on using those funds to increase wages rather than decrease them.

While some will argue that I have oversimplified medical services’ financial problems, which I concede have been exacerbated by Covid-19, I contend that the pandemic has brought the real issue into focus—the profit motive that underlies almost everything in medicine.  Hospitals want to build bigger, better, fancier.  Medical equipment is highly profitable.  Prescription drug prices are more expensive than their real costs warrant.  Personnel management companies want a piece of medical personnel wages.  Hospital managers are driven by profits and high salaries.  Insurance companies pay for some of the direct costs but they want a piece of every service.  Every part of the system is driven by a profit motive that is inappropriate in what--I believe--should be a service industry.

At the end of the day it depends on whether the primary driving purpose behind physician and hospital services is to save lives and serve people or to make a profit for owners and managers.  That will determine the priorities, how the money flows and who benefits from providing medical services.

Trump Golfs While Pandemic Rages

No need for comment [credit Twitter]

Stolen Gilgamesh Tablets Recovered at Bible Museum

Anyone concerned with antiquities, including ancient historians and museum curators in particular, are rightly concerned about the trade in stolen artifacts from the ancient world.  Sites from Egypt to Mesopotamia have been looted regularly in modern times to sell stolen goods to private collectors and major museums, and in ancient times to obtain gold and precious jewels   After the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government a number of museums in Iraq were looted and some valuable statuary was destroyed by Muslim fundamentalists.

That is why the US government has filed suit against the Hobby Lobby seeking to return stolen tablets containing part of the story of Gilgamesh to the Iraqi government.  [Read the interesting story here.]  The Hobby Lobby’s owners are donors to extreme right-wing causes and political action groups who established the Bible Museum in Washington, DC and have been involved in a number of prior instances of dealing with dealers of ill repute to obtain artifacts for their museum.

Is Trump Challenging Mother Nature To A Duel?

Thomas L Friedman’s brilliant article outlines a dangerous flaw in Trump’s reopen strategy:

I try to ground all my thoughts on how to deal with this pandemic in the logic of Mother Nature and the laws of natural systems. If you don’t — if instead you start your analysis with politics or ideology, or the fact that you’re just tired of being locked down so what the hell, let’s throw back a few with the gang at the local bar and the virus be damned — you’re actually challenging Mother Nature to a duel….

All that registers, all that she rewards, is one thing: adaptation. She doesn’t reward the richest or the strongest or the smartest of the species. She rewards the most adaptive. They get to pass along their DNA….

For all these reasons it’s clear, or should be, that the holy grail every nation needs to be looking for is what Dr. David Katz, a public health expert, argued from the beginning of this crisis: a “sustainable strategy of total harm minimization.” That means a strategy that would save as many lives and as many livelihoods as possible at the same time….

We need to reopen and we need to adapt, but in ways that honor Mother Nature’s logic, not in ways that court a second wave — not in ways that challenge Mother Nature to a duel. That is not smart. Because she hasn’t lost a duel in 4.5 billion years.

Read the whole article in The New York Times [here]

Is Florida Manipulating Covid-19 Data?

CNN reported today that Florida and Georgia, both Republican-controlled states that seem eager to do Trump’s bidding by reopening their states to business before the data indicates that Covid-19 is sufficiently contained, may be manipulating their data to conceal some information from the public.  If true, and reports show that is likely, it is endangering the public by making it seem safer to open than it actually is. [see the report here.]

The most serious claim is that the manager of Florida’s well-respected Covid-19 data reporting website was removed from her job and apparently terminated for insubordination because she refused to change data that conflicted with Governor Ron DeSantis’ positive claims that the State was ready to fully reopen.  [See the story here.]  DeSantis is an altar boy and water carrier for Trump who has shown he is willing to support Trump’s message that the economy should be opened without regard to its consequences to help his reelection campaign.

Opening Up Safely

After being confined to our homes for so long as our economy suffered, our personal finances were devastated, our hopes for graduation and our entry to the world of work were dashed,  our health care workers and our elderly grandparents and occasionally our younger friends were killed, we are now beginning to experience the freedom of leaving our homes and venturing out again into the world of work and fun.  Let us not forget the lessons learned with such patience and endurance and hardship that our safety and the safety of our friends, neighbors and relatives require us to follow diligently the protocols for safety—to wear a mask, wash our hands, keep our hands away from our face, and stay at least six feet away from others. [AGB]