With homage to Daniel Defoe, random thoughts because today all thoughts are random.
Martial Law
Will it take that to keep tens of thousands of fools off the beaches in Florida, from exercising in public spaces in close proximity?
This is not China, where a despotic government can lock down regions or the entire country or South Korea, where close order drill is the way of a homogenous society.
China tonight reported its first full day without a new case. Can we get to that if thousands of people are going to go to beaches and find other ways around the kind of lockdown China imposed, that Italy, a far more cohesive nation than us, is managing?
No, we can’t. We are The Americans, the people of Conestoga wagon trains, the open road, no internal borders, no internal documents — except in liquor stores and bars.
What could it take if we keep misbehaving to get us to understand that stay home means stay home?
It could take martial law and suspension of Habeas Corpus, the latter of which we have not seen since Abraham Lincoln dared to do it during the Civil War. Do we want that under Trump? Shudder.
What’s the choice then? Don’t go to the beach, stay at home.
Don’t bet against it, martial law that is, if this is not done by June.
And the Candidate Is? Part XVI
Joe Biden.
Everything yours truly wrote about the potential for a contested convention was true except there came a moment, an exact moment, that being the moment James Clyburn endorsed Biden, a moment when Democrats everywhere realized there was a way out of their deep despond.
They realized it had to be Biden or it would, in fact, go to a fractured convention with no telling how that would end except probably badly and with Bernie Sanders the nominee; and that if it ended with Bernie as nominee it would bring a down-ballot debacle.
It was as if the same thought suddenly occurred to about 30 million people. They all realized, at the same moment, it has to be Joe Biden and that’s that and everyone else, get out. And Bernie? They universally decided, 65% of them that Bernie? Bernie, for Pete’s sake Bernie, either give it up or get run over by us, the Democratic Party’s voters.
Bernie stayed in. Now, he’s been run over and will be out shortly.
Vice Presidential Candidate
He said a woman. So the only question is which woman? One who ran for president and lost? A black woman? Someone we don’t hardly know? Someone no one is thinking about but maybe should?
So, quickly, no, not Kamala Harris. If black voters had thought of her as – had seen her as a black woman she would be the nominee. They did not see her or Corey Booker as their favored candidate, as one of them, speaking for them.
They saw and see Joe Biden as that person because no one but him is the choice of Barack Obama. How do they know he is that choice? Because President Obama already chose him, choosing him 12 years ago.
So, obviously, they see Joe Biden as their candidate. And that means? That means it does not necessarily have to be a black woman in the Veep spot.
What if it is? Who could it be?
Well, everyone agrees on Stacy Abrams except if you get down to it, she doesn’t have the political background. She is a great communicator but…but it’s problematic because we don’t know enough about her and there is not time enough to vet her the way a national ticket candidate should be who is largely unknown.
After all, George W. Bush didn’t know until it was too late that Dan Quail was not very sharp. And then there was the unvetted Sarah Palin.
Congresswoman Val Demmings of Florida is being talked about. Right, mostly you haven’t heard of her. In this woe-begotten time is there time to introduce an unknown? Again, time to really, really vet her. Common sense, as well as political sense, says, NO, there is not..
Who then? Elizabeth Warren? No, she and Biden are not on the same page, never will be and she brings strengths but also infirmities. We know too much about her, she is too vetted, too much a lightning rod to electrify opposition.
Of the other women who ran who perhaps then? Amy Klobuchar perhaps. She was moving up, wasn’t going to win but was impressing. She has a problem with black voters? Yes. What’s the problem? They had no idea who she was and, by the same measure, she had no idea who they were/are. But as Biden’s choice that would begin to be cured and she is a fast learner.
Someone from out of political left field but known to liberals and Democrats and women in the suburbs? Maybe, but who?
Cecile Richards, a most, a very much most impressive person who, as the former head of Planned Parenthood, would galvanize the woman’s vote, and as the daughter of Ann Richards could perhaps turn Texas blue and if Texas turns blue, the deal is done. I agree, she is an unlikely choice but one not beyond imagining.
What is perhaps the over-riding consideration in his choice of a V.P. candidate?
This. Joe Biden will be 78 on inauguration day. Even If he lives out the term he will be elected to, even if he cannot say it without making himself a lame duck, he is likely to be a one-term president.
So who he chooses is more than just a typical balance-the- ticket choice. It is the choice of someone who more likely than anyone else in the nation right now will be president within five years. That makes it an entirely different choice.
Baseball
I miss it.
Donald Trump
Unfit, unprepared, misbegotten, miserable miscreant. And worse.
Stimulus Packages (Or is it Stimuli Packages?)
Should be paid for now because the Congress will never get around to that if and when this ever recedes into some kind of new normal.
How pay for it?
Reverse much of the Trump $1.9 trillion tax cut, raise the top marginal rate to about 75%, close the hedge fund loophole called carried interest – in fact, close all the loopholes and dodges that famous top 1% uses to evade taxation; attach a 10% surcharge to all income taxes paid on all incomes of $1 million or more and adopt a wealth tax modeled on that proposed by Elizabeth Warren. Raise the capital gains tax to 28%.
Do all of that for at least three years and then revisit it.
The way to save capitalism in the present catastrophe enveloping it? Tax capital and the highest incomes it produces and the wealth it accumulates to finance the financial rescue of American capitalism’s economy. It will come back to everyone, including the wealthy, in spades in several years.
But we cannot add $5 trillion in debt without stepping up by matching it now — NOW -with substantially equivlent revneue and, by the time this is over. $5 trillion in stimuli packages is not inconceivable
That would be equal to one-quarter of the present national debt.
Any good Republican will tell you that it is not sustainable if you want something like the U.S.A. that you know and remember from just two weeks ago to emerge from this in tact in a few months or many months more.
Peeling the Onion 