J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 32

Lemieux: The Abbott of Death���Noted

Scott Lemieux: The Abbott of Death https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/07/the-abbott-of-death: 'The situation in the nation���s second-largest state is absolutely catastrophic: "More than 250,000 Texans have now been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the latest numbers from the Department of State Health Services. On Saturday, the state reported a record 10,351 new cases of the coronavirus, and the number of people reported to be hospitalized with COVID-19 reached 10,083, breaking the previous record of 10,002 set Friday..." It���s worth recalling that Greg Abbott literally forbade local governments from instituting mask ordinances when cases began to spike. He wasn���t just indifferent, he took proactive measures to ensure that as many people got sick and died as possible. He did at least retreat while DeSantis has plowed ahead, but it was way too late.... Republicans are botching this massively even though their political self-interest and sound policy are perfectly aligned. A Republican Party that was motivated by pure venality would be a major improvement over the actually existing one, which is committed to many bad ideas it refuses to revisit even when they���re failing in ways that directly damage their political self-interest. In related news, New York City had zero COVID deaths reported today. The Republican theory of COVID response is that Andrew Cuomo and Bill deBlasio acted brilliantly in March and are screwing things up now��� .#noted #2020-07-16

Kristol: Is the Republican Party a Lost Cause?���Noted

William Kristol: Is the Republican Party a Lost Cause? https://thebulwark.com/can-the-republican-party-be-saved/: ���With embarrassingly few exceptions at every level, the Republican party is Donald Trump���s party. So in many ways it deserves to be a lost cause. On the other hand, after November 3, the GOP may stop���more or less suddenly, and more or less convincingly���being Donald Trump���s party. It might even stop being the party of Trumpism. On the third hand, it will still have been Donald Trump���s party. And that moral and political stain can���t, and shouldn���t, simply be wished away. On the fourth hand: It would be good for the country if there were a conservative party that wasn���t a nativist/proto-authoritarian/nationalist-populist party. This would be the case for not giving up on the GOP, but rather fighting to save it. But on the fifth hand, wishing for a sound conservative party won���t make it so. And even fighting for one may not make it so, either. It may be that American conservatism has been so damaged that a ���new center������whether as a party or some sort of cross-partisan coalition���is a better way to go than trying to save the GOP. On the sixth hand (I know, we���re in octopus territory here): Maybe we should root for the GOP to be salvaged, while acknowledging it won���t be saved by us people like us. After all, if the GOP is to be rebuilt, it will likely have to be done by people who have been complicit in Trumpism.... So Never Trumpers will be personae non gratae. The only people who will be afforded the opportunity to save the GOP are the ones who helped wreck it.... Such is politics.... Often the best one can do is... simply to fight for an outcome that is right and just in the short term. While at the same time keeping an open mind for the medium and long term. I will admit that my heart, today, is with ���the Republican party is a lost cause��� faction��� .#noted #2020-07-16

Rachman: Coronavirus Could Kill Off Populism���Noted

That neofascists propose to win elections not by doing any heavy policy lifting to expand the pie or redirect pieces of it���heavy lifting that would require the slow boring of holes through hard materials���was originally a source of political strength. But when there are clear things that a government needs to do for the safety and well-being of the public, the fact that neofascism has no policy competence turns into a weakness:

Gideon Rachman: Coronavirus Could Kill Off Populism https://www.ft.com/content/3bcf2b5e-e5f1-48e4-bb15-cd29615a9198: ���Populists hate to be unpopular. That is why they have proved so bad at handling Covid-19, a crisis that brings nothing but grim news���death, economic destruction and curtailed freedoms. Donald Trump, the US president, and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil���s president, are the two most prominent populist leaders in the western world. The disastrous results of their approach to coronavirus are now becoming apparent...

...Last week, Brazil became the second country in the world, after the US, to record more than 50,000 Covid-19 deaths. The distinguishing characteristic of the Trump-Bolsonaro approach to Covid-19 is a fatal inability to face reality....

In Britain, Boris Johnson has been more respectful of the scientific consensus. But, early in the crisis, the prime minister did succumb to one of the biggest flaws in the populist approach: a dangerous reluctance to act on bad news. As other European nations went into lockdown, he proclaimed that ���we live in a land of liberty��� and delayed taking action. Partly as a result, the UK has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Europe. In just two months, Mr Johnson has gone from record popularity to a negative approval rating.

By contrast, Angela Merkel���who is detested by Mr Trump and many other populist leaders���has had a good crisis. Germany has one of Europe���s lowest per capita death rates. When Mr Johnson protested in parliament last week that there is not a single example of a country with an effective contact-tracing app, Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition, responded with a single word: Germany. The contrast between Ms Merkel���s performance and those of the populists demonstrates that an ability to understand evidence is a useful trait in a leader....

Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University speculated to the BBC recently: ���The Covid-19 epidemic may actually lance the boil of populism.���... The defeat of Mr Trump in particular would have global implications....

[But] there is the possibility that, amid a crisis, the norms of democratic politics will simply break down. Mr Trump has already unnerved many political observers with his repeated assertions that November���s election will be rigged. Mr Bolsonaro has packed his cabinet with generals and said that the military will ignore ���absurd��� rulings ���to remove a democratically elected president���.... Populism may indeed be rejected by voters in the wake of Covid-19. But there is no guarantee that the populists will go quietly...

.#noted #2020-07-16

Sample: Immunity to Covid-19 Could Be Lost in Months, Uk Study Suggests

This may be really, really bad news. If this now-endemic virus, as dangerous and debilitating as it is, is also such that some���many?���of our immune system���s have a hard time retaining a durable memory of it, then we are in trouble. We either require permanent social distancing, or we accept a cut in human life expectancy of perhaps a decade, plus morbidity effects on our quality of life.

But our vaccine researchers and pharmacists are ingenious: every-six-month vaccination boosts are certainly possible:

Ian Sample: Immunity to Covid-19 Could Be Lost in Months, Uk Study Suggests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/immunity-to-covid-19-could-be-lost-in-months-uk-study-suggests: ���The virus could reinfect people year after year, like common colds. In the first longitudinal study of its kind, scientists analysed the immune response of more than 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy���s and St Thomas��� NHS foundation trust and found levels of antibodies that can destroy the virus peaked about three weeks after the onset of symptoms then swiftly declined. Blood tests revealed that while 60% of people marshalled a ���potent��� antibody response at the height of their battle with the virus, only 17% retained the same potency three months later. Antibody levels fell as much as 23-fold over the period. In some cases, they became undetectable. ���People are producing a reasonable antibody response to the virus, but it���s waning over a short period of time and depending on how high your peak is, that determines how long the antibodies are staying around,��� said Dr Katie Doores, lead author on the study at King���s College London. The study has implications for the development of a vaccine, and for the pursuit of ���herd immunity��� in the community over time. The immune system has multiple ways to fight the coronavirus but if antibodies are the main line of defence, the findings suggested people could become reinfected in seasonal waves and that vaccines may not protect them for long. ���Infection tends to give you the best-case scenario for an antibody response, so if your infection is giving you antibody levels that wane in two to three months, the vaccine will potentially do the same thing,��� said Doores. ���People may need boosting and one shot might not be sufficient"... .#noted #2020-07-16

Duncan Black: Mick Mulvaney Contemplates the Clusterf--- That He Made���Noted

Words for those who worked very hard to hobble the response to the coronavirus crisis back in February, and who now contemplate the clusterf--- they worked so hard to make while they wriggle to evade responsibility: Duncan Black: You F---ed The Whole Thing Up https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/07/you-fucked-whole-thing-up.html: ���Let's check in with Mick Mulvaney: "Any stimulus should be directed at the root cause of our recession: dealing with Covid. I know it isn���t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country. My son was tested recently; we had to wait 5 to 7 days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested before visiting her grandparents, but was told she didn���t qualify. That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic." [weird scratching backwards music noise as we rewind time back a few months] Ah, here we are, CPAC Feb. 28: "White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney suggested Friday that Americans ignore the media���s coverage of the coronavirus, arguing that journalists are ratcheting up fears to try to hurt President Donald Trump politically���" .#noted #orangehairedbaboons #2020-07-15

Kreis: Actions Have Consequences���Noted

Shorter Anthony Michael Kreis: think very hard whether you want to make this point now, in this context, with these peoples' lives at stake, rather than wait and choose another test case in which there will be less collateral damage:

Anthony Michael Kreis: https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1282030010908446725: 'I find it profoundly troubling to see junior law profs use their time and scholarly work to undermine exceedingly reasonable public health measures designed to save lives. YOLO I guess.'

Orin Kerr: 'Anthony, can I ask a question about your subtweet? I gather that xxxx believes he is acting in the public interest by being an activist law professor���challenging government action that may be popular but that he sees as illegal and disturbing. If that's right, is your objection that another junior lawprof could disagree so much with your view of the public interest? To the specific legal arguments he is making? The idea of law professors taking their views to the courts? Some combo? Thanks.'

Anthony Michael Kreis: 'That���s perfectly fine. I���ve had lots of criticism for my law reform work. I invite it by taking positions that impact the public���we all do. There���s nothing wrong with that. I���m merely criticizing the choice to pursue this of all things, especially with life or death consequences. My attempt to not call him out by name and start a huge thing, but still make clear to those who knew what I was talking about, may have given the misimpression this is about jr folks���it isn���t. This is just about value judgments as shown by our choices. I just vigorously disagree.'

Orin Kerr: 'There's another part to it, though. Ilan is taking an extreme minority view from within the academy. One way to read your tweet is that you want to make sure he pays a personal price for dissenting.'

Anthony Michael Kreis: 'I don���t want people to die. This isn���t about him.'

Orin Kerr: 'I don't want people to die, either. But your initial tweet framed this in very personal terms, making it seem like it was about him. (A subtweet, but I think everyone knew who you had in mind.)'

Anthony Michael Kreis: 'I was trying to identify what I was talking about without dragging his name into. As I indicated in a response to my initial tweet, I didn���t want to start a big thing. But someone snitch tweeted and it blew up. My attempt to dissent without calling out failed. I���m sorry for that.'

Orin Kerr: 'That's fair, and I appreciate the clarification. Although given how few people agree with Ilan's position, maybe you were concurring, not dissenting. ;)'

.#moralresponsibility #noted #orangehairedbaboons #2020-07-15

Coates (2010): It's Not That You're Racist... ���Noted

I see that Cornell's William Jacobson is back, claiming that he is being cancelled. I see that he claims so in spite of his dean Eduardo M. Pe��alver's writing that "to take disciplinary action against him for the views he has expressed would fatally pit our values against one another in ways that would corrode our ability to operate" and that he employs Jacobson because we "value academic freedom, which prevents us from censoring the extramural writings of faculty members, and we value job security for our clinical faculty..."

It is worth underlining, since Pe��alver finds Jacobson's writings "offensive and poorly reasoned" and "not reflect[ing] the values of Cornell Law School", that this is a long established pattern and practice from Jacobsons pen. William Jacobson has long taken it to be his mission to metaphorically wave the Confederate battle-flag in Ithaca, NY: Ta-Nehisi Coates (2010): It's Not That You're Racist... https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/12/its-not-that-youre-racist/68522/: ���...It's that you're either ignorant or dishonest. Cornell Law Professor William A. Jacobson inveighing against Matt Yglesias...

...1947 was the year in which the color barrier was broken in Major League Baseball. Prior to Jackie Robinson taking the field, MLB (or whatever it was called at the time) was segregated. Actually, it was more than segregated, it excluded blacks completely.��

Using the logic of Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, who is having his 15 minutes of race card fame, anyone who expresses any measure of praise for the pre-1947 Yankees necessarily would be "expressing affection for a White Supremacist" organization. It would not matter that the praise was for the Yankees' baseball skills; any expression of anything less than complete condemnation of the Yankees necessarily evidences tolerance for racism because the Yankees were part of a racist system.��

That logic is what Yglesias uses against Haley Barbour because Barbour made a statement that when Barbour was growing up in the early 1960s in Yazoo City, Mississippi, the "Citizens Council" stood up to the Klan and was organized to keep the Klan out of Barbour's home town. That apparenly is a true statement, but because the Citizens Council also supported the system of segregation, Yglesias has accused Barbour of "expressing affection for the White Supremacist Citizens Council," and almost the entire nutroots blogsphere has picked up the meme that Barbour is a racist.��

Yet nothing Barbour said, or has done in his professional life, supports the charge that Barbour supported segregation himself, although if he were a Southern Democrat during the 1960s he almost certainly would have supported segregation...

Accusing Barbour of being racist is odious and evil because there is no evidence to support the charge. Yglesias merely does what I could do to anyone who praised the pre-1947 Yankees.

I think it helps to be very clear on the basic charges here:

Matt has accused Barbour of "expressing affection for the White Supremacist Citizens Council." and spurred the "nutroots blogsphere" (I assume that's basically left blogger) have ran with that and used it to argue that Haley Barbour is a racist.

Left bloggers, like Matt, claiming that Barbour is a racist are doing something "odious and evil."

Let's take the last point first���I think it would be generally, odious and evil, to accuse someone of racism without much evidence. I think there's quite a bit of evidence that Haley Barbour is shockingly ignorant of the history of his state, and of American history at large. In his office hangs the battle-flag of an Army raised solely to found a republic based on White Supremacy.��

This is not the politically correct sooth-saying of liberal historians. It's the reprehensible rantings of the very Confederates whom Haley Barbour honors.��Here is��the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, rejecting the founding fathers notion of equality of man:

The prevailing ideas entertained by [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Here is��the��declaration of��secession��from the very state where Haley Barbour now presides:

In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.��Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.��These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

I guess I can agree that merely displaying the flag of a white supremacist Army, praising a group which opposed integration in the 1960s, and���at this very moment���is boycotting a Hollywood movie because for casting a black person as a Norse diety, does not make one a racist. I guess I'd also agree that dressing in Nazi regalia, and praising Pat Buchanan's writings on Jews doesn't, in itself, make you an anti-Semite. No one can know the contents of person's heart.��But it does make you, as Matt charged, ��"dangerously ignorant," among many other things. Of course��Jacobson never quotes Matt���or frankly anyone���charging that Barbour is a racist.

That of course leads us to the second point���that there is an outbreak of liberal bloggers claiming Barbour is a racist. A google search of "Barbour is a racist" is instructive. It does not reveal a single liberal blog of real note making that case. On the contrary it reveals a raft of sites either��arguing that Barbour isn't a racist, or arguing why it's not relevant.��Unable to deal with the actual arguments made by Matt here, for instance, and evidently generally ignorant of the basic facts of American history, Jacobson simply strawmans and changes the subject.��

Regrettably, this is basically the accepted tactic of many conservatives when talking about race. It happens so often that, in most cases, it's not even worth noting. But Jacobson is a professor at one of the most��prestigious institutions of higher learning in this country. I can't for the life of me imagine how someone rises to such heights and, evidently, never acquires an understanding of the rudiments of American history, nor an ethic of honest debate.

It's true that universities are sprawling. But this is the kind of dissembling defense of public official who honors a white��supremacist��flag, and praises a white��supremacist��organization, is what you get out of a professor at Cornel, what real hope is there for cable news?���

.#noted #publicsphere #racism #2020-07-15

Coaston: Tuberville Wins the Alabama GOP Senate Primary���Noted

Tommy Tuberville 61.4%, Jeff Sessions 38.6%. So ends the political career of Jeff Sessions, perhaps the most racist senator of his generation, and the first to endorse Donald Trump for president. Jeff Sessions implemented Trump���s family separation policy. He stole five year olds to punish their parents at Trump���s urging. And now Trump doesn't like him:

Joan Coaston: Tommy Tuberville Wins the Alabama GOP Senate Primary https://www.vox.com/2020/7/14/21324520/tuberville-wins-gop-senate-primary-july-sessions: ���Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville defeated former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Alabama���s Republican primary runoff election on Tuesday.... Tuberville has never served in elected office (and moved to Alabama only two years ago), and his campaign against Sessions was largely based on his support for the president. Trump endorsed Tuberville in March, tweeting, ���Tommy was a terrific head football coach at Auburn University. He is a REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down!��� On a Monday call with Alabama voters, Trump said of Tuberville, ���He���s going to have a cold, direct line into my office. That I can tell you.��� Whether Tuberville was a ���terrific��� football coach at Auburn is a matter of some debate... Tuberville���s football past could play a surprisingly big part in November���s general election. Though he gained national attention for leading the Auburn Tigers to an undefeated season in 2004, five years earlier he handed down a one-game suspension to a player who was charged with the second-degree rape of a 15-year-old girl. Despite the player pleading guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Tuberville permitted the player to remain on the team. Tuberville also abandoned Texas Tech recruits and assistant coaches mid-dinner in 2012, the night before he announced he would take a new job at the University of Cincinnati. And then there was his infamous radio appearance in 1998 when, as then-head coach at the University of Mississippi, he promised he would only leave the job ���in a pine box������and then flew to Auburn two days later to become head coach of the Tigers. On the field, as Sessions���s campaign noted on Twitter, Tuberville���s stints at Auburn, Texas Tech, and Cincinnati did not end successfully. ���He was the leader of a team that went bad,��� Sessions said July 11. Whether he���ll serve his team well in November remains to be seen��� .#noted #2020-07-14

LawProfBlog: I Was Brave, Once���Noted

LawProfBlog: _I Was Brave, Once https://abovethelaw.com/2020/07/i-was-brave-once/: ���There was an outpouring of conservative support, the likes I haven���t seen since I and others tweeted that it was a terrible idea for a law student to clean his gun on screen during a zoom class.... The original outrage was about a subtweet...

...This post isn���t about the Arizona case or either of those two professors: It is the notion of academic bravery....

I���ll be defending Godzilla. Godzilla entered the United States, and immediately started wreaking havoc in San Francisco. The military sought to bomb Godzilla and kill him. I thought to myself: What a perfect time to bring an action via the Endangered Species Act! Who could be more oppressed that Godzilla? He suffers from being unique, way beyond the ���discreet and insular��� minority contemplated in Carolene Products. And he doesn���t have a voice (okay, literally, he roars and that���s it).�� And like Anakin Skywalker, he brings balance to the Force (if you have seen the most recent movies)....

My legal practice as an academic clearly does not demonstrate my core values. Sometimes you just got to take the hard cases for higher principles. Don���t judge me! There are bigger issues at stake!... It���s weak tea to complain about my moral core. If I had a dime for every time someone cried about their baby getting stomped by Godzilla! They just don���t understand that I���m the underdog fighting against a big bad oppressor who is trampling (pun intended) upon (my interpretation of) the Constitution. Many of my friends have been crushed by Godzilla! My mother, too! That���s just how much I love (selected parts) of the Constitution. I���m willing to have others sacrifice for me. I���m very brave, and my scholarly impact score soars!

And, I���m brave because I don���t see anyone else in the cowardly academy defending Godzilla....

Yes, the law DOES require lawyers and law professors to take controversial and adversarial positions. And no one is saying Our Hero shouldn���t be able to defend bar owners or that he should be punished for it.... However, what we are defending should transcend political football teams. It says something about the principles of a law professor who defends the right to peacefully assemble, both when the neo-Nazis seek to march and when antifa seeks to do the same. It says something about the lawyer���s principles, too, if their practice is based only on defending neo-Nazis. We might call the former principle consistency, and it often is missing when law professors choose political football teams.

Silence says something, too. For example, one might be silent when a law professor is being bullied for advocating gender equality, yet outraged when someone questions whether it is a good idea to open bars given all the evidence of bar patrons and COVID-19 being perfect companions. And it might say something if we are silent when students are forced to take a bar exam during a pandemic all the while applauding someone who seeks to open bars for alcohol. It might say something when we vigorously defend the gun-cleaning student and stay silent as students seek desperately not to have to risk their health to take the bar exam...

.#moralresponsibility #orangehairedbaboons #2020-07-14

Adams (1776): 'Passion for Liberty Cannot be Eaquelly Strong in... Those... Accustomed to Deprive Their Fellow Creatures of Theirs'���Noted

Abigail Smith Adams (1776): '[Virginians'] Passion for Liberty Cannot be Eaquelly Strong https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/letter-abigail-adams-1776.pdf: 'Tell me if you may... what sort of Defence Virginia can make.... Whether it is so situated as to make an able Defence? Are not the Gentery Lords and the common people vassals, are they not like the uncivilized Natives Brittain represents us to be? I hope their Riffel Men who have shewen themselves very savage and even Blood thirsty; are not a specimen of the Generality of the people. I [illegible] am willing to allow the Colony great merrit for having produced a Washington but they have been shamefully duped by a Dunmore. I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs. Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us...

 

.#liberty #noted #racism #reading #2020-07-14