theamericanconservative--2020-03-05--Coronavirus: The Latest Attempt To Prove Trump’s a Chump

The TDS press has lost all perspective when it comes to the president and frankly , it 's making us all sick .
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar , National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci , Vice President Mike Pence , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and Surgeon General Jerome Adams look on during a news conference at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House February 29 , 2020 in Washington , DC .
( Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Propaganda and the Death of Media 101 .
Its , um , March 9 , 2024 .
Now we were discussing the role of propaganda and the media in the re-election of Donald Trump by tying his leadership to a global pandemic .
Propaganda in these cases seeks to diminish people ’ s view of a leader ’ s competence .
The ultimate goal is to influence you to vote him out .
The word “ influenza ” even comes from the Italian word for “ influence.
” Okay class , let ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 2020 with 2009 under Obama .
The first cases of the swine flu , H1N1 , appeared in April 2009 .
By the time Obama finally declared a national emergency that fall , the CDC reported that 50 million Americans , one in six people , had been infected and 10,000 Americans had died .
In the early months of the disease , Obama had no secretary of health and human services or appointees in any of the department ’ s 19 key posts .
No commissioner of the Food and Drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CDC director .
The vacancy at the CDC was especially important , as in the early days of the crisis , only they could test for the virus ; states weren ’ t allowed until later .
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano , not a medical doctor , led the federal effort .
Sound familiar ?
The first real H1N1 cases appeared in Mexico , though Mexicans were never forbidden to enter the U.S. And while the CDC recommended against travel there , the primary danger cited was kidnapping for ransom .
Some 66 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media , thought the president was protecting them even as 4,000 Americans died before a vaccine was even distributed .
The emergency proclamation it took Obama seven months to declare was issued by Trump within 30 days of the coronavirus being found abroad .
He announced a temporary suspension of entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals who posed a risk for transmission ( CNN warned : “ the travel ban could stigmatize countries and ethnicities ” ) .
And yes , Trump encouraged everyone to wash their hands .
Anybody here remember @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s initial response , which was also to suggest everyone wash their hands ?
Anyone find evidence of national panic ?
No .
So why did the media cover essentially an identical story so very differently ?
Now let ’ s turn to the timing in 2020 .
The crisis arrived when the media decided it was time for a crisis .
Though the virus had dominated headlines in Asia since mid-January , American media relegated it to business news .
In late February , the main “ Trump ” story was still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russians were meddling in another election .
The lackluster Democratic debate at the end of February invoked Putin many times .
The virus barely came up .
Then the New York Times sent up the Bat Signal the day after the debate , an article titled “ Let ’ s Call It Trumpvirus ” ( subtlety is not required for propaganda ) .
An effort was born to blame Trump for the outbreak and essentially declare his chances of reelection done .
The critical change had little to do with the virus itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media to elevate the story from the business section to the front page .
Only a handful of Americans had died and about half the known U.S. cases had arrived as evacuees from Japan ( should we even have left them go there ? )
.
Of course , the numbers quickly went up , but that ’ s why we say “ going viral ” when your Instagram blows up .
You ’ ll see in your textbooks another example of how propaganda works , the reporting of initial problems with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ headline claimed , “ The U.S .
Badly Bungled Coronavirus Testing.
” But the problems were old news almost as soon as the stories were written .
Within a week , nearly a million tests would be available .
The follow-on stories screamed about Trump cutting funding to the CDC , most of which was actually only proposed .
Then the stories were merged—Trump cut CDC funding and thus not enough kits were available .
Not only were both pieces largely untrue individually , the fusion of the two was grossly false .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to mock Trump , like late-night comedians trolling the news for monologue fodder .
The problem with the testing kits was a technical one involving chemical reagents and factory contamination .
CDC is a massive institution .
Who if anyone there made any “ bungled ” decisions ?
Would they have really made a better choice with different funding ?
This is how the media acts when they seek to fix the blame , not the problem .
The propaganda surrounding how the government initially handled the coronavirus was also obvious , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ charge ” question the media asked .
The vice president was assigned to head up the task force .
This is the kind of thing VPs do : bring gravitas , make sure a whole of government approach has the bureaucratic firepower it needs , and so on .
The propaganda instead hyper-focused on Mike Pence ’ s “ disbelief in science.
” For “ proof , ” the stories settled on Pence supposedly creating an HIV epidemic while governor of Indiana .
The reality was different .
Pence took office opposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among opioid users in rural Scott County were linked to 71 cases of HIV transmission , Pence responded to the new information by changing his policy and authorizing needle exchange in Scott and four other counties .
The reality seems much closer to seeing an ideological stance changed by science than the other way around .
Meanwhile , the media largely ignored those whom Pence chose for his task force .
One was Dr. Deborah Birx , a career medical professional nominated by Obama in 2014 as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ global HIV/AIDS division at CDC , and was an immunology researcher at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and an Army colonel .
You want to inspire confidence , you profile Dr. Birx ; you want to sow discord , you misrepresent Mike Pence ’ s decisions years ago .
There are many more examples .
Here are just a few .
You reported on the elimination of Obama ’ s pandemic czar but left out that the position was just a coordination job on the National Security Council with no real power .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it sabotage ) , but in fact the coordination duties within NSC were reassigned to others , including Dr. Birx .
You focused on every coronavirus case as proof that efforts were failing while ignoring that 12,000 people died , with over 13 million infected , from the regular influenza ( the one with the vaccine ) just between October 2019 and February 2020 .
You covered the virus as you did Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico .
Everyone was gon na die there until they didn ’ t .
You followed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t do enough , then say what he does do isn ’ t being done fast enough , wrongly predict everything will collapse ( with Katrina references ) , then move on to the next thing .
You reported store closings , but not their reopenings .
By March 1 , Starbucks had reopened 85 percent of its stores in China ; Apple , over 50 percent .
You emphasized how many Chinese factories were idled in February , but didn ’ t report on reopenings in March , such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity .
You ignored the drop off of cases inside China .
Only a few days after the first cases appeared in the U.S. , new ones inside China dropped to 200 .
Viruses follow a bell curve .
Case counts first rise quickly , with the virus claiming “ easy ” deaths among the elderly , and then environmental factors ( viruses must live inside a host ; they have limited life outside on surfaces and typically less as temperatures climb ) and public health measures kick in .
Treatments emerge and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where things are in what looks like a 10-to-12 week cycle or you can ignore it to stoke fear of the unknown .
Articles that claimed at the earliest stages of the virus that our “ very way of life is threatened , ” or asked “ When is it going to end ?
” were good examples .
How HIV/AIDS went from a public health crisis in America to a manageable problem shows how the bell curve works .
As the virus became known , panic took hold .
Then , albeit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s transmission became understood , testing protocols developed , preventive medicines became available , and treatment regimes were developed that ensured long lives in remission .
Knowns displaced unknowns .
There is an established path out even for a virus far more deadly than corona .
Okay class , there ’ s more on the economic reporting but it ’ s more of the same .
And to set the record straight , New York City rats never developed the ability to eat the coronavirus as a food source , and the vaccine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Richards ’ blood .
That ’ s it for today guys .
“ Hey professor , is this gon na be on the test ?
” “ No , but it may still influence an election.
” Peter Van Buren , a 24-year State Department veteran , is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , Hooper ’ s War : A Novel of WWII Japan , and Ghosts of Tom Joad : A Story of the # @ @ @

Everyone settle down. Welcome back to Propaganda and the Death of Media 101. Its, um, March 9, 2024. Now we were discussing the role of propaganda and the media in the re-election of Donald Trump by tying his leadership to a global pandemic. Propaganda in these cases seeks to diminish people’s view of a leader’s competence. The ultimate goal is to influence you to vote him out. The word “influenza” even comes from the Italian word for “influence.”
Okay class, let’s start by contrasting the media-induced panic of 2020 with 2009 under Obama. The first cases of the swine flu, H1N1, appeared in April 2009. By the time Obama finally declared a national emergency that fall, the CDC reported that 50 million Americans, one in six people, had been infected and 10,000 Americans had died.
In the early months of the disease, Obama had no secretary of health and human services or appointees in any of the department’s 19 key posts. No commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, no surgeon general, no CDC director. The vacancy at the CDC was especially important, as in the early days of the crisis, only they could test for the virus; states weren’t allowed until later. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, not a medical doctor, led the federal effort. Sound familiar?
The first real H1N1 cases appeared in Mexico, though Mexicans were never forbidden to enter the U.S. And while the CDC recommended against travel there, the primary danger cited was kidnapping for ransom. Some 66 percent of Americans, supported by the media, thought the president was protecting them even as 4,000 Americans died before a vaccine was even distributed.
The emergency proclamation it took Obama seven months to declare was issued by Trump within 30 days of the coronavirus being found abroad. He announced a temporary suspension of entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals who posed a risk for transmission (CNN warned: “the travel ban could stigmatize countries and ethnicities”). And yes, Trump encouraged everyone to wash their hands.
Anybody here remember the media freaking out over Obama’s initial response, which was also to suggest everyone wash their hands? Anyone find evidence of national panic? No. So why did the media cover essentially an identical story so very differently?
Now let’s turn to the timing in 2020. The crisis arrived when the media decided it was time for a crisis. Though the virus had dominated headlines in Asia since mid-January, American media relegated it to business news. In late February, the main “Trump” story was still Russiagate II, the faux revelation that Russians were meddling in another election. The lackluster Democratic debate at the end of February invoked Putin many times. The virus barely came up.
Then the New York Times sent up the Bat Signal the day after the debate, an article titled “Let’s Call It Trumpvirus” (subtlety is not required for propaganda). An effort was born to blame Trump for the outbreak and essentially declare his chances of reelection done. The critical change had little to do with the virus itself, simply with the decision by the media to elevate the story from the business section to the front page. Only a handful of Americans had died and about half the known U.S. cases had arrived as evacuees from Japan (should we even have left them go there?). Of course, the numbers quickly went up, but that’s why we say “going viral” when your Instagram blows up.
You’ll see in your textbooks another example of how propaganda works, the reporting of initial problems with the CDC coronavirus test kits. One typical headline claimed, “The U.S. Badly Bungled Coronavirus Testing.” But the problems were old news almost as soon as the stories were written. Within a week, nearly a million tests would be available.
The follow-on stories screamed about Trump cutting funding to the CDC, most of which was actually only proposed. Then the stories were merged—Trump cut CDC funding and thus not enough kits were available. Not only were both pieces largely untrue individually, the fusion of the two was grossly false. The media treated developments as raw material to mock Trump, like late-night comedians trolling the news for monologue fodder.
The problem with the testing kits was a technical one involving chemical reagents and factory contamination. CDC is a massive institution. Who if anyone there made any “bungled” decisions? Would they have really made a better choice with different funding? This is how the media acts when they seek to fix the blame, not the problem.
The propaganda surrounding how the government initially handled the coronavirus was also obvious, what with the false “who is in charge” question the media asked. The vice president was assigned to head up the task force. This is the kind of thing VPs do: bring gravitas, make sure a whole of government approach has the bureaucratic firepower it needs, and so on. The propaganda instead hyper-focused on Mike Pence’s “disbelief in science.”
For “proof,” the stories settled on Pence supposedly creating an HIV epidemic while governor of Indiana. The reality was different. Pence took office opposed to needle exchanges. When dirty needles shared among opioid users in rural Scott County were linked to 71 cases of HIV transmission, Pence responded to the new information by changing his policy and authorizing needle exchange in Scott and four other counties. The reality seems much closer to seeing an ideological stance changed by science than the other way around.
Meanwhile, the media largely ignored those whom Pence chose for his task force. One was Dr. Deborah Birx, a career medical professional nominated by Obama in 2014 as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator. She also served as head of the global HIV/AIDS division at CDC, and was an immunology researcher at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and an Army colonel. You want to inspire confidence, you profile Dr. Birx; you want to sow discord, you misrepresent Mike Pence’s decisions years ago.
There are many more examples. Here are just a few.
You reported on the elimination of Obama’s pandemic czar but left out that the position was just a coordination job on the National Security Council with no real power. It sounds scary (one outlet called it sabotage), but in fact the coordination duties within NSC were reassigned to others, including Dr. Birx.
You focused on every coronavirus case as proof that efforts were failing while ignoring that 12,000 people died, with over 13 million infected, from the regular influenza (the one with the vaccine) just between October 2019 and February 2020.
You covered the virus as you did Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Everyone was gonna die there until they didn’t. You followed the now-standard Trump propaganda template: say he won’t do enough, then say what he does do isn’t being done fast enough, wrongly predict everything will collapse (with Katrina references), then move on to the next thing.
You reported store closings, but not their reopenings. By March 1, Starbucks had reopened 85 percent of its stores in China; Apple, over 50 percent. You emphasized how many Chinese factories were idled in February, but didn’t report on reopenings in March, such as Apple partner Foxconn coming back to full capacity.
You ignored the drop off of cases inside China. Only a few days after the first cases appeared in the U.S., new ones inside China dropped to 200. Viruses follow a bell curve. Case counts first rise quickly, with the virus claiming “easy” deaths among the elderly, and then environmental factors (viruses must live inside a host; they have limited life outside on surfaces and typically less as temperatures climb) and public health measures kick in. Treatments emerge and the virus fades. You can explain where things are in what looks like a 10-to-12 week cycle or you can ignore it to stoke fear of the unknown. Articles that claimed at the earliest stages of the virus that our “very way of life is threatened,” or asked “When is it going to end?” were good examples.
How HIV/AIDS went from a public health crisis in America to a manageable problem shows how the bell curve works. As the virus became known, panic took hold. Then, albeit always too slowly, the virus’s transmission became understood, testing protocols developed, preventive medicines became available, and treatment regimes were developed that ensured long lives in remission. Knowns displaced unknowns. There is an established path out even for a virus far more deadly than corona.
Okay class, there’s more on the economic reporting but it’s more of the same. And to set the record straight, New York City rats never developed the ability to eat the coronavirus as a food source, and the vaccine eventually developed was not cultured from Keith Richards’ blood. That’s it for today guys.
“Hey professor, is this gonna be on the test?”
“No, but it may still influence an election.”
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent.


theamericanconservative--2020-03-05--No, Bernie is Not a ‘Self-Hating Jew’

No, Bernie is Not a ‘Self-Hating Jew’

These days , I ’ m feeling sorry for Bernie Sanders .
He seems to have incurred the displeasure of just about every establishment in this country .
Although I don ’ t agree with his economic policies or his readiness to take over the intersectional politics of other Democratic presidential candidates ( Bernie used to be quite good on the need for immigration restrictions ) , I can certainly respect him for his enemies .
Whatever my differences with him , Bernie showed guts when he turned down an invitation from AIPAC , an organization that has ruined critics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The trashing of Sanders by AIPAC groupies as a “ self-hating Jew ” bring to mind the old saying “ Tanti nemici tante honore [ So many enemies , so much honor ] .
” When the annual AIPAC gathering assembled in Washington on March 1 , the politicians who were present , led by Mike Pence and Mike Bloomberg , took turns firing away at the missing Democratic candidate .
It seems that Bernie had betrayed the party of Harry Truman , the Democratic president who in 1948 first recognized the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ longtime bipartisan support for Israel , which AIPAC leaders repeatedly affirmed as integral to our national political life .
In a group statement , we also learn : “ Senator Sanders has never attended our conference , and that is evident from his outrageous comment.
” Further : “ Senator Sanders is insulting his very own colleagues and the millions of Americans who stand with Israel .
Truly shameful.
” Allow me to raise some obviously rhetorical questions : would a candidate for president from one of our two national parties feel obliged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ French or Italian government ?
And have our politicians devoted the same concern to Christians who are at risk in Muslim countries as they have to the Israeli lobby ?
Why do our “ conservative ” Republicans worry less ( or so it would seem ) about endangered Christian communities in China and the Middle East than they do about Israeli geopolitical interests ?
Equally noteworthy : in August , House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed apparent concern on Fox News that the “ Democrats are moving away from Israel due to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Even allowing for McCarthy ’ s crocodile tears and the childish outbursts over the “ new socialist group , ” one might want to ask why a prominent Republican leader is emphasizing Democratic defections from the AIPAC camp .
Might it have to do with holding on to his party ’ s Zionist donors while getting the same from the Democratic side ?
Jamie Kirchick , a veteran Sanders despiser and a reliable neocon publicist , writes inTablet about why “ America ’ s first serious Jewish presidential candidate garners only a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Kirchick ’ s explanation is that Jewish Democrats have always “ abhorred men like Sanders ” who have sought “ to erase distinctions between democrats and totalitarians on the left.
” Sanders emerges “ from an entirely different political lineage , that of anti-anti-communism , ” he continues .
Curiously , Kirchick cites the Jewish socialist fraternal organization , the Workmen ’ s Circle , as exemplifying the anti-communist socialism that Sanders has repudiated .
But the Workmen ’ s Circle has always been emphatically opposed to the “ territorial Zionism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their neocon readers all enthusiastically support .
Even more questionable is the assumption that Jewish Democrats are eschewing Sanders because of his far-left associations .
In 2008 , 74 percent of Jewish voters , including leaders of the Jewish Orthodox community , stood behind Barack Obama in his run against John McCain .
It is hard to think of any Democratic presidential candidate who up until then brought with him more radical , far-left , pro-communist associations .
Yet Obama was enormously popular in the Jewish community .
Kirchick ’ s brief against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more credible is the obvious fact that Sanders has fought the Zionist lobby and gone his own way on the Arab-Israeli conflict .
The very explicitly neoconservative website Front Page has been attacking Sanders for years , as someone who has been too critical of Israel and too soft on the Palestinians .
It quotes Kirchick repeatedly on the Sanders problem and dwells on the senator ’ s failure to uphold the moral superiority of the Israelis in their struggle against the “ genocidal Palestinians.
” Kirchick and Front Page editor Mark Tapson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Sanders high-balled figures for Palestinian civilians killed in the bloody uprisings against the Israelis in 2014 .
They also object to his use of the term “ disproportionate force ” to describe the Israeli response , since no force can be excessive “ if your enemy is obsessed with wiping you off the face of the earth.
” The figures that I ’ ve encountered for these reprisals , which are about 2,300 dead Palestinians , mostly from Gaza , and about 10,000 wounded , look high to me , but I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s or Tapson ’ s judgment about what constitutes an excessive use of force .
Let ’ s just not pretend the real quarrel here is primarily over Sanders ’ economic policies .
Or that those who are attacking Sanders over his snubbing of AIPAC would be honest brokers in the protracted conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians .
Paul Gottfried is the editor-in-chief of Chronicles .
He is also Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College , where he taught for 25 years , a Guggenheim recipient , and a Yale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 13 books , most recently Fascism : Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents .

These days, I’m feeling sorry for Bernie Sanders. He seems to have incurred the displeasure of just about every establishment in this country.
Although I don’t agree with his economic policies or his readiness to take over the intersectional politics of other Democratic presidential candidates (Bernie used to be quite good on the need for immigration restrictions), I can certainly respect him for his enemies. Whatever my differences with him, Bernie showed guts when he turned down an invitation from AIPAC, an organization that has ruined critics for disagreeing with their Middle East policies. The trashing of Sanders by AIPAC groupies as a “self-hating Jew” bring to mind the old saying “Tanti nemici tante honore [So many enemies, so much honor].”
When the annual AIPAC gathering assembled in Washington on March 1, the politicians who were present, led by Mike Pence and Mike Bloomberg, took turns firing away at the missing Democratic candidate. It seems that Bernie had betrayed the party of Harry Truman, the Democratic president who in 1948 first recognized the Jewish state. He was also threatening longtime bipartisan support for Israel, which AIPAC leaders repeatedly affirmed as integral to our national political life. In a group statement, we also learn: “Senator Sanders has never attended our conference, and that is evident from his outrageous comment.” Further: “Senator Sanders is insulting his very own colleagues and the millions of Americans who stand with Israel. Truly shameful.”
Allow me to raise some obviously rhetorical questions: would a candidate for president from one of our two national parties feel obliged to attend a lobbying organization representing the French or Italian government? And have our politicians devoted the same concern to Christians who are at risk in Muslim countries as they have to the Israeli lobby? Why do our “conservative” Republicans worry less (or so it would seem) about endangered Christian communities in China and the Middle East than they do about Israeli geopolitical interests?
Equally noteworthy: in August, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed apparent concern on Fox News that the “Democrats are moving away from Israel due to the influence of the ‘new socialists.’” Even allowing for McCarthy’s crocodile tears and the childish outbursts over the “new socialist group,” one might want to ask why a prominent Republican leader is emphasizing Democratic defections from the AIPAC camp. Might it have to do with holding on to his party’s Zionist donors while getting the same from the Democratic side?
Jamie Kirchick, a veteran Sanders despiser and a reliable neocon publicist, writes in Tablet about why “America’s first serious Jewish presidential candidate garners only a tiny fraction of support from Jewish Dems.” Kirchick’s explanation is that Jewish Democrats have always “abhorred men like Sanders” who have sought “to erase distinctions between democrats and totalitarians on the left.” Sanders emerges “from an entirely different political lineage, that of anti-anti-communism,” he continues.
Curiously, Kirchick cites the Jewish socialist fraternal organization, the Workmen’s Circle, as exemplifying the anti-communist socialism that Sanders has repudiated. But the Workmen’s Circle has always been emphatically opposed to the “territorial Zionism,” that Kirchick, Tablet, and their neocon readers all enthusiastically support.
Even more questionable is the assumption that Jewish Democrats are eschewing Sanders because of his far-left associations. In 2008, 74 percent of Jewish voters, including leaders of the Jewish Orthodox community, stood behind Barack Obama in his run against John McCain. It is hard to think of any Democratic presidential candidate who up until then brought with him more radical, far-left, pro-communist associations. Yet Obama was enormously popular in the Jewish community. Kirchick’s brief against Sanders is therefore not convincing. Far more credible is the obvious fact that Sanders has fought the Zionist lobby and gone his own way on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The very explicitly neoconservative website Front Page has been attacking Sanders for years, as someone who has been too critical of Israel and too soft on the Palestinians. It quotes Kirchick repeatedly on the Sanders problem and dwells on the senator’s failure to uphold the moral superiority of the Israelis in their struggle against the “genocidal Palestinians.”
Kirchick and Front Page editor Mark Tapson both complain that, among his failings, Sanders high-balled figures for Palestinian civilians killed in the bloody uprisings against the Israelis in 2014. They also object to his use of the term “disproportionate force” to describe the Israeli response, since no force can be excessive “if your enemy is obsessed with wiping you off the face of the earth.”
The figures that I’ve encountered for these reprisals, which are about 2,300 dead Palestinians, mostly from Gaza, and about 10,000 wounded, look high to me, but I won’t quarrel with Kirchick’s or Tapson’s judgment about what constitutes an excessive use of force. Let’s just not pretend the real quarrel here is primarily over Sanders’ economic policies. Or that those who are attacking Sanders over his snubbing of AIPAC would be honest brokers in the protracted conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Paul Gottfried is the editor-in-chief of Chronicles. He is also Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents.


theamericanconservative--2020-03-06--Biden’s New Status Doesn’t Come With a New Biden

He 's the same candidate he was before the South Carolina primary -- and that could be a problem .
A week ago , the candidacy of Joe Biden was at death ’ s door .
On a taping of “ The McLaughlin Group , ” this writer suggested it might be time to “ call the rectory ” and have the monsignor come render last rites .
Today , Biden ’ s candidacy is not only alive .
He is first in votes , victories and delegates , and is favored to win the nomination and , by most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ November .
“ The World Turned Upside Down ” was a song the British army band is said to have played at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown .
That title applies to what happened in the U.S. political world in the five days from Feb. 29 to March 4 .
Going into South Carolina on Feb. 29 , Joe Biden had run a miserable and losing campaign .
Starting as the odds-on favorite for the nomination , he finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses , fifth in New Hampshire and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nevada caucuses .
His fundraising was anemic .
His debate performances ranged from tolerable to terrible .
On the eve of South Carolina , his proclaimed “ firewall , ” the media conceded he might win but wrote him off as a probable fatality on Super Tuesday when 14 states went to the polls .
Then came South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn ’ s endorsement of Biden , which solidified and energized the African American vote in the Palmetto State and led to a Biden blowout in Saturday ’ s primary .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the victory created a momentum that Mike Bloomberg ’ s billions could not buy .
Over that weekend came the withdrawal of Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar and endorsements by both of Biden as the party ’ s best hope against Donald Trump .
Came then Biden ’ s sweep of 10 of the 14 states holding primaries on Super Tuesday .
Wednesday saw the withdrawal of Bloomberg , who endorsed Biden and pledged his vast fortune to help Joe and the party defeat Trump in November .
Moreover , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hamlet , ” “ When sorrows come , they come not single spies but in battalions.
” For 10 days , the Dow Jones average has gyrated wildly , wiping out trillions of dollars in wealth , while the coronavirus slowly claimed victims and dominated the world ’ s media .
Predictions of a pandemic , a global economic downturn and a national recession were everywhere .
All in all , a triumphal week for Biden , who racked up 11 state primary victories .
Before last Saturday , he had not won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But if earlier reports of the demise of Joe Biden were premature , so , too , are today ’ s confident predictions of a Biden sweep this November , marching over the political corpse of Trump and bringing in a Democratic Senate and Democratic House .
As Yogi Berra said , “ It ain ’ t over till it ’ s over.
” Bernie Sanders ’ “ Revolution ” remains unreconciled to a Beltway-Biden restoration , against which many of the Democratic candidates railed before dropping out , including Elizabeth Warren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the last hurrah , must decide whether he wants to go down fighting for his cause or stack arms and march into Biden ’ s camp .
If Sanders chooses to fight , he can , even in near-certain defeat , be victorious in history if his “ movement ” one day captures the national party as it has captured a plurality of the party ’ s young .
If Sanders goes into the coming debates and forces Biden to defend his votes — for George Bush ’ s war in Iraq and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Communist China — he may still be crushed .
But Sanders is a true believer .
And , for such as these , it is better to die on the hill you have lived and fought on than to march into camp to be patted on the head by an establishment that secretly detests you .
Then there is Biden ’ s vulnerability .
He may be hailed by a fickle media as a conquering hero today .
But after the cheering stops , Biden is going to be , for the next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been for the last eight months .
Here is a description of that candidate by The New York Times the day after his Super Tuesday triumph : “ Any suggestion that Mr. Biden is now a risk-free option would appear to contradict the available evidence .
He is no safer with a microphone , no likelier to complete a thought without exaggeration or bewildering detour .
“ He has not , as a 77-year-old man proudly set in his ways , acquired new powers of persuasion or management in the 72 hours @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his three presidential campaigns .
“ Mr .
Biden has blundered this chance before — the establishment front-runner ; the last , best hope for moderates — fumbling his initial 2020 advantages in a hail of disappointing fund-raising , feeble campaign organization and staggering underperformance.
” It ain ’ t over till it ’ s over .
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon ’ s White House Wars : The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever .

A week ago, the candidacy of Joe Biden was at death’s door.
On a taping of “The McLaughlin Group,” this writer suggested it might be time to “call the rectory” and have the monsignor come render last rites.
Today, Biden’s candidacy is not only alive. He is first in votes, victories and delegates, and is favored to win the nomination and, by most polls, to defeat Donald Trump in November.
“The World Turned Upside Down” was a song the British army band is said to have played at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. That title applies to what happened in the U.S. political world in the five days from Feb. 29 to March 4.
Going into South Carolina on Feb. 29, Joe Biden had run a miserable and losing campaign.
Starting as the odds-on favorite for the nomination, he finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses, fifth in New Hampshire and then was routed by Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses. His fundraising was anemic. His debate performances ranged from tolerable to terrible.
On the eve of South Carolina, his proclaimed “firewall,” the media conceded he might win but wrote him off as a probable fatality on Super Tuesday when 14 states went to the polls.
Then came South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden, which solidified and energized the African American vote in the Palmetto State and led to a Biden blowout in Saturday’s primary.
The nonstop free and favorable publicity Biden gained from the victory created a momentum that Mike Bloomberg’s billions could not buy. Over that weekend came the withdrawal of Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar and endorsements by both of Biden as the party’s best hope against Donald Trump.
Came then Biden’s sweep of 10 of the 14 states holding primaries on Super Tuesday. Wednesday saw the withdrawal of Bloomberg, who endorsed Biden and pledged his vast fortune to help Joe and the party defeat Trump in November.
Moreover, for Trump, as Claudius observed in “Hamlet,” “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”
For 10 days, the Dow Jones average has gyrated wildly, wiping out trillions of dollars in wealth, while the coronavirus slowly claimed victims and dominated the world’s media. Predictions of a pandemic, a global economic downturn and a national recession were everywhere.
All in all, a triumphal week for Biden, who racked up 11 state primary victories. Before last Saturday, he had not won a single primary in three presidential campaigns.
But if earlier reports of the demise of Joe Biden were premature, so, too, are today’s confident predictions of a Biden sweep this November, marching over the political corpse of Trump and bringing in a Democratic Senate and Democratic House.
As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Bernie Sanders’ “Revolution” remains unreconciled to a Beltway-Biden restoration, against which many of the Democratic candidates railed before dropping out, including Elizabeth Warren.
Sanders, for whom this is the last hurrah, must decide whether he wants to go down fighting for his cause or stack arms and march into Biden’s camp.
If Sanders chooses to fight, he can, even in near-certain defeat, be victorious in history if his “movement” one day captures the national party as it has captured a plurality of the party’s young.
If Sanders goes into the coming debates and forces Biden to defend his votes — for George Bush’s war in Iraq and for NAFTA and WTO trade concessions to Communist China — he may still be crushed.
But Sanders is a true believer. And, for such as these, it is better to die on the hill you have lived and fought on than to march into camp to be patted on the head by an establishment that secretly detests you.
Then there is Biden’s vulnerability.
He may be hailed by a fickle media as a conquering hero today. But after the cheering stops, Biden is going to be, for the next eight months, the same candidate he has been for the last eight months. Here is a description of that candidate by The New York Times the day after his Super Tuesday triumph:
“Any suggestion that Mr. Biden is now a risk-free option would appear to contradict the available evidence. He is no safer with a microphone, no likelier to complete a thought without exaggeration or bewildering detour.
“He has not, as a 77-year-old man proudly set in his ways, acquired new powers of persuasion or management in the 72 hours since the first primary state victory of his three presidential campaigns.
“Mr. Biden has blundered this chance before — the establishment front-runner; the last, best hope for moderates — fumbling his initial 2020 advantages in a hail of disappointing fund-raising, feeble campaign organization and staggering underperformance.”
It ain’t over till it’s over.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.


theamericanconservative--2020-03-06--Palliative Liberalism Can’t Cure Our Ailing Working Class

The implicit theory of technocratic neoliberalism is that the U.S. and other Western societies at this point are essentially classless societies in which the only significant barriers involve race and gender .
The people at the top got there purely as a result of their own efforts , on the basis of their superior intellectual or academic skills .
Many of these corporate managers , financiers , lawyers , accountants , engineers , foundation program officers , media elites , and academics do pretty much the same kind of work that people in their professions did half a century ago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ industrial organization .
But we are supposed to believe that they are not just old-fashioned managers and professionals , but members of a new “ creative class ” and “ digital elite , ” the “ thinkpreneurs ” and “ thought leaders ” of the “ knowledge economy ” who live in “ brain hubs ” ( to use only a few of the flattering terms in the lexicon of overclass self-idolatry ) .
From the assumption that a nearly meritocratic “ knowledge economy ” has replaced class-stratified , bureaucratic managerial capitalism follow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are class-neutral , race- or gender-based policies to remove barriers to the advancement of racial minorities and women , including native white women .
The second are policies that include skills training or retraining for unsuccessful native white men .
Class-neutral , race-based policies in the United States include affirmative action in hiring , government set-asides for specified groups in contracting , and gerrymandering of congressional districts to create majority-minority districts likely to elect a member of a racial minority as a representative .
In most cases the beneficiaries of these policies tend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within a particular racial or ethnic group .
For technocratic neoliberalism , the goal is to ensure that there is the proper racial and gender balance within the overclass , the balance that presumably would result from a perfect meritocracy .
If pure meritocracy does not yet exist , then a simulacrum will be created .
But as the British socialist thinker Ralph Miliband put it , “ access to positions of power by members of the subordinate classes does not change the fact of domination ; it only changes the personnel.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Europe already have near-classless societies , to be made perfectly classless by a few low-cost policy interventions , also compels neoliberals to attribute the problems of the native white Western working class not to the class system but rather to personal shortcomings , which a number of unfortunate individuals are alleged to share .
The most important personal shortcoming is alleged to be a lack of adequate job skills .
The theory of skill-biased technological change ( SBTC ) was popular during the bubble years before the Great Recession .
SBTC theory explained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left-behind ” members of the working class had inferior and outmoded skills not needed by the “ creative class ” or the “ digital elite ” in the new “ global knowledge economy.
” The premise has been that U.S. corporations like Apple did not offshore production to China to take advantage of low-wage , unfree workers and state subsidies of various kinds .
No , it is often implied , the poor Chinese workers migrating from rural areas to make iPhones in sweatshop factories in southern China in degrading conditions for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Technology , Engineering , and Math ) skills unmatched among ignorant American or European workers .
Provide these “ left-behind ” workers in the West with appropriate skills ( “ human capital ” in the pseudoeconomic jargon of neoliberalism ) and their earnings will increase .
On the basis of SBTC theory , school curricula in the U.S. and elsewhere have been reconfigured to focus on STEM skills .
For a generation , the conventional wisdom has held that the “ jobs of the future ” are “ knowledge economy ” jobs like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true ?
For working-class Americans and Europeans , the jobs of the future are mostly low-wage jobs , many of them in health care .
In most of these jobs , the low wages are caused not by a lack of university education , which is not needed , nor by a lack of vocational skills , but by a lack of bargaining power on the part of workers .
Somewhat bolder proposals to help the working class , which also avoid any heretical questioning of the labor market effects of deunionization , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more redistribution of income in the form of cash transfers or tax breaks and more opportunities for working-class citizens to start their own businesses .
Redistributionist proposals range from expanding tax subsidies to wage earners , like America ’ s earned income tax credit ( EITC ) , to the old but periodically revived idea of a universal basic income ( UBI ) , which would allow all citizens to live at a minimally adequate level without working .
While some minor forms of enhanced redistribution to mollify discontented voters will undoubtedly be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for massive cash transfers are doomed for a number of reasons .
Purchasing political acquiescence from workers who have stagnant or declining incomes with substantial amounts of cash requires an economically dynamic sector of the economy to make the bribes affordable .
In some versions , radical redistributionism posits the permanent existence of high intellectual-property rents flowing from the rest of the world to tech tycoons , along with global financial rents flowing to money managers .
These rents , it is assumed , will be so high and sustainable that the tycoons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the rest of the population in the nation-states in which they happen to reside .
At the local level , something like this system has long existed in tech centers like San Francisco and financial entrepôts like New York and London .
Local rentier interests are coddled by governments in return for their contribution to revenues .
But while it may work in a few hub cities , the policy can not be scaled up to the level of the ordinary nation-state , much less a continental nation-state like the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inhabitants .
It is no coincidence that Reaganism-Clintonism and Thatcherism-Blairism flourished in an era of prolonged asset bubbles .
For a time , it is possible for stock market booms and real estate bubbles to fund public services and redistribution while allowing the wealthy to keep most of their gains .
But the financial industry is volatile and global innovation rents quickly disappear , as a result of lapsing patents , intellectual property theft , foreign success in indigenous innovation , and the commoditization of former cutting-edge industries .
Recently a rival approach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ growing attention and support among American progressives .
Based on a revival of the long-moribund small-producer republicanism of William Jennings Bryan , Louis Brandeis , and Wright Patman , this school blames inequality and a host of other social ills on increasing “ concentration ” or “ monopoly ” and proposes a radical antitrust policy as a panacea .
Breaking up large firms into smaller ones , it is claimed , will increase opportunities for Americans to exit the labor market by transitioning from wage earners to small business owners .
Those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will have their bargaining power increased , and the monopsony wage-setting power of employers reduced , by a government policy of breaking up big employers into a greater number of smaller ones—so it is said .
Praising small business is certain to be an applause line in most Western democracies , given popular nostalgia for old-fashioned small-town and rural life .
But multiplying the number of small firms will not help the wage-earning majority , because small firms pay poorly .
In the U.S. , large firms with over five hundred workers in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but only 28 percent of low-wage workers .
Firms with fewer than ten workers employed only 20 percent of the workforce but 42 percent of low-wage workers .
Some of the new antimonopolists have suggested that breaking up big firms can increase the bargaining power of workers .
But the idea that janitors will be in a better position to bargain for higher wages if Facebook is broken into three or four or five giant successor firms is implausible , to say the least .
The cure-alls of education , redistribution , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ center-left to the center-right , in part , no doubt , because they do not question the commitment of post-1970s neoliberalism to liberalized policies about trade , immigration , and organized labor .
Redistribution , for example , is not necessarily a left-wing idea .
On the contrary , labor liberals and social democrats have usually opposed proposals for post-tax transfers of cash to individuals , in favor of measures that increase the ability of workers to bargain for higher pretax wages , like limits on immigration and offshoring , collective bargaining at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public job guarantees and socialized in-kind benefits like universal health care ( “ de-commodification ” ) .
Conversely , cash transfers and ideas of universal capitalism have a long and distinguished pedigree on the free market right .
From Milton Friedman in the 1960s to Charles Murray in the 1990s , libertarians have proposed using some form of a basic income as a substitute , not a supplement , for most or all other social insurance and antipoverty programs .
But like the panaceas of education and redistribution , anti-monopolism does not question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the antimonopolists claim , with some justification , that they are even more fervent devotees of markets than conventional neoliberals .
Worst of all , three of these schools of thought seek to respond to working-class populist rebellions by offering workers the chance to become something other than workers , as though there were something shameful and retrograde about being an ordinary wage earner .
Many champions of education as a panacea want to turn wage earners into professionals .
Advocates of universal capitalism want to turn wage earners into investors .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ small business owners .
In the 1930s , Keynes speculated about the euthanasia of the rentier class .
These reformers propose the euthanasia of the working class .
The neoliberal utopia is a workerless paradise .
What about socialism—the genuine kind with state ownership of the means of production ?
In theory , the option of democratic socialism need not be discredited by the horrors wrought by Marxist-Leninist dictatorships in rural nations like twentieth-century Russia and China .
Democratic socialism is discredited for other reasons .
One is the greater track record of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of markets , public enterprises , and nonprofit provision , over both the pure free market economy and state socialism .
A case can be made for socializing some enterprises or industries , but socializing everything can only be justified by dogmatic ideology .
The other argument against democratic socialism is the fact that socializing most or all of the economy by itself would not address the problem of checking the power of the managerial elite , which mere elections , however free , would be unlikely to constrain .
Empowering organized labor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provide real checks on the managerial overclass , without sacrificing the dynamism of the mixed economy .
The American writer Daniel McCarthy has aptly called approaches like the ones I have criticized in this essay “ palliative liberalism.
” However popular these miracle cures may be among the managerial elite and the overclass intelligentsia , as remedies for working-class distress in the deindustrialized heartlands of the Western world the panaceas of redistributionism , education , and antimonopolism are like prescriptions of aspirin for cancer .
They may ameliorate the symptoms , but they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power , within Western nation-states , between the overclass and the working class as a whole , including many exploited immigrant workers who labor for the affluent in the metropolitan hubs .
If banana republicanism is to be avoided as the fate of the Western democracies , reformers in America and Europe will have to do far more than buy off the population with a subsidy here or an antitrust lawsuit there .
Indeed , if a package of minor , ameliorative reforms is handed down from the mountaintops of Davos or Aspen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the technocrats and the politicians and intellectuals whom the billionaires subsidize , with little or no public participation or debate , the lack of voice and agency of most citizens will be made apparent in the most humiliating way .
What the racially and religiously diverse working-class majorities in the Western nations need is what they once possessed and no longer have : countervailing power .
In the absence of mass-membership institutions comparable to the older grassroots parties , labor unions , and religious organizations , which can provide ordinary citizens with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the managerial elite , palliative reform at most can create oligarchy with a human face .
Michael Lind is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin .
This essay is adapted from his most recent book , The New Class War : Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite , published on January 21st by Portfolio , an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group , a division of Penguin Random House , LLC .
© 2020 by Michael Lind .

The implicit theory of technocratic neoliberalism is that the U.S. and other Western societies at this point are essentially classless societies in which the only significant barriers involve race and gender. The people at the top got there purely as a result of their own efforts, on the basis of their superior intellectual or academic skills. Many of these corporate managers, financiers, lawyers, accountants, engineers, foundation program officers, media elites, and academics do pretty much the same kind of work that people in their professions did half a century ago, adjusted for differences in technology and industrial organization. But we are supposed to believe that they are not just old-fashioned managers and professionals, but members of a new “creative class” and “digital elite,” the “thinkpreneurs” and “thought leaders” of the “knowledge economy” who live in “brain hubs” (to use only a few of the flattering terms in the lexicon of overclass self-idolatry).
From the assumption that a nearly meritocratic “knowledge economy” has replaced class-stratified, bureaucratic managerial capitalism follow two kinds of policies. The first are class-neutral, race- or gender-based policies to remove barriers to the advancement of racial minorities and women, including native white women. The second are policies that include skills training or retraining for unsuccessful native white men.
Class-neutral, race-based policies in the United States include affirmative action in hiring, government set-asides for specified groups in contracting, and gerrymandering of congressional districts to create majority-minority districts likely to elect a member of a racial minority as a representative. In most cases the beneficiaries of these policies tend to be members of the affluent elite within a particular racial or ethnic group. For technocratic neoliberalism, the goal is to ensure that there is the proper racial and gender balance within the overclass, the balance that presumably would result from a perfect meritocracy. If pure meritocracy does not yet exist, then a simulacrum will be created. But as the British socialist thinker Ralph Miliband put it, “access to positions of power by members of the subordinate classes does not change the fact of domination; it only changes the personnel.”
The assumption that contemporary North America and Europe already have near-classless societies, to be made perfectly classless by a few low-cost policy interventions, also compels neoliberals to attribute the problems of the native white Western working class not to the class system but rather to personal shortcomings, which a number of unfortunate individuals are alleged to share.
The most important personal shortcoming is alleged to be a lack of adequate job skills. The theory of skill-biased technological change (SBTC) was popular during the bubble years before the Great Recession. SBTC theory explained rising inequality by asserting that the “left-behind” members of the working class had inferior and outmoded skills not needed by the “creative class” or the “digital elite” in the new “global knowledge economy.”
The premise has been that U.S. corporations like Apple did not offshore production to China to take advantage of low-wage, unfree workers and state subsidies of various kinds. No, it is often implied, the poor Chinese workers migrating from rural areas to make iPhones in sweatshop factories in southern China in degrading conditions for a pittance had superior STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) skills unmatched among ignorant American or European workers. Provide these “left-behind” workers in the West with appropriate skills (“human capital” in the pseudoeconomic jargon of neoliberalism) and their earnings will increase.
On the basis of SBTC theory, school curricula in the U.S. and elsewhere have been reconfigured to focus on STEM skills. For a generation, the conventional wisdom has held that the “jobs of the future” are “knowledge economy” jobs like software coding. But is this really true?
For working-class Americans and Europeans, the jobs of the future are mostly low-wage jobs, many of them in health care. In most of these jobs, the low wages are caused not by a lack of university education, which is not needed, nor by a lack of vocational skills, but by a lack of bargaining power on the part of workers.
♦♦♦
Somewhat bolder proposals to help the working class, which also avoid any heretical questioning of the labor market effects of deunionization, offshoring, and mass immigration, include more redistribution of income in the form of cash transfers or tax breaks and more opportunities for working-class citizens to start their own businesses.
Redistributionist proposals range from expanding tax subsidies to wage earners, like America’s earned income tax credit (EITC), to the old but periodically revived idea of a universal basic income (UBI), which would allow all citizens to live at a minimally adequate level without working. While some minor forms of enhanced redistribution to mollify discontented voters will undoubtedly be tried in many Western countries, proposals for massive cash transfers are doomed for a number of reasons.
Purchasing political acquiescence from workers who have stagnant or declining incomes with substantial amounts of cash requires an economically dynamic sector of the economy to make the bribes affordable. In some versions, radical redistributionism posits the permanent existence of high intellectual-property rents flowing from the rest of the world to tech tycoons, along with global financial rents flowing to money managers. These rents, it is assumed, will be so high and sustainable that the tycoons and money managers will gladly share them with the rest of the population in the nation-states in which they happen to reside.
At the local level, something like this system has long existed in tech centers like San Francisco and financial entrepôts like New York and London. Local rentier interests are coddled by governments in return for their contribution to revenues. But while it may work in a few hub cities, the policy cannot be scaled up to the level of the ordinary nation-state, much less a continental nation-state like the United States, with a third of a billion inhabitants.
It is no coincidence that Reaganism-Clintonism and Thatcherism-Blairism flourished in an era of prolonged asset bubbles. For a time, it is possible for stock market booms and real estate bubbles to fund public services and redistribution while allowing the wealthy to keep most of their gains. But the financial industry is volatile and global innovation rents quickly disappear, as a result of lapsing patents, intellectual property theft, foreign success in indigenous innovation, and the commoditization of former cutting-edge industries.
♦♦♦
Recently a rival approach to reform, antimonopolism, has attracted growing attention and support among American progressives. Based on a revival of the long-moribund small-producer republicanism of William Jennings Bryan, Louis Brandeis, and Wright Patman, this school blames inequality and a host of other social ills on increasing “concentration” or “monopoly” and proposes a radical antitrust policy as a panacea. Breaking up large firms into smaller ones, it is claimed, will increase opportunities for Americans to exit the labor market by transitioning from wage earners to small business owners. Those who continue to sell their labor for wages will have their bargaining power increased, and the monopsony wage-setting power of employers reduced, by a government policy of breaking up big employers into a greater number of smaller ones—so it is said.
Praising small business is certain to be an applause line in most Western democracies, given popular nostalgia for old-fashioned small-town and rural life. But multiplying the number of small firms will not help the wage-earning majority, because small firms pay poorly. In the U.S., large firms with over five hundred workers in 2007 employed 44 percent of all workers but only 28 percent of low-wage workers. Firms with fewer than ten workers employed only 20 percent of the workforce but 42 percent of low-wage workers.
Some of the new antimonopolists have suggested that breaking up big firms can increase the bargaining power of workers. But the idea that janitors will be in a better position to bargain for higher wages if Facebook is broken into three or four or five giant successor firms is implausible, to say the least.
♦♦♦
The cure-alls of education, redistribution, and antimonopolism enjoy broad elite support from the center-left to the center-right, in part, no doubt, because they do not question the commitment of post-1970s neoliberalism to liberalized policies about trade, immigration, and organized labor. Redistribution, for example, is not necessarily a left-wing idea. On the contrary, labor liberals and social democrats have usually opposed proposals for post-tax transfers of cash to individuals, in favor of measures that increase the ability of workers to bargain for higher pretax wages, like limits on immigration and offshoring, collective bargaining at the firm or sectoral level, and public job guarantees and socialized in-kind benefits like universal health care (“de-commodification”).
Conversely, cash transfers and ideas of universal capitalism have a long and distinguished pedigree on the free market right. From Milton Friedman in the 1960s to Charles Murray in the 1990s, libertarians have proposed using some form of a basic income as a substitute, not a supplement, for most or all other social insurance and antipoverty programs.
But like the panaceas of education and redistribution, anti-monopolism does not question the premises of economic neoliberalism. Indeed, the antimonopolists claim, with some justification, that they are even more fervent devotees of markets than conventional neoliberals.
Worst of all, three of these schools of thought seek to respond to working-class populist rebellions by offering workers the chance to become something other than workers, as though there were something shameful and retrograde about being an ordinary wage earner. Many champions of education as a panacea want to turn wage earners into professionals. Advocates of universal capitalism want to turn wage earners into investors. Antimonopolists want to turn wage earners into small business owners.
In the 1930s, Keynes speculated about the euthanasia of the rentier class. These reformers propose the euthanasia of the working class. The neoliberal utopia is a workerless paradise.
♦♦♦
What about socialism—the genuine kind with state ownership of the means of production? In theory, the option of democratic socialism need not be discredited by the horrors wrought by Marxist-Leninist dictatorships in rural nations like twentieth-century Russia and China.
Democratic socialism is discredited for other reasons. One is the greater track record of the mixed economy, with a blend of markets, public enterprises, and nonprofit provision, over both the pure free market economy and state socialism. A case can be made for socializing some enterprises or industries, but socializing everything can only be justified by dogmatic ideology.
The other argument against democratic socialism is the fact that socializing most or all of the economy by itself would not address the problem of checking the power of the managerial elite, which mere elections, however free, would be unlikely to constrain. Empowering organized labor by means like tripartite business-labor-government bargaining can provide real checks on the managerial overclass, without sacrificing the dynamism of the mixed economy.
♦♦♦
The American writer Daniel McCarthy has aptly called approaches like the ones I have criticized in this essay “palliative liberalism.” However popular these miracle cures may be among the managerial elite and the overclass intelligentsia, as remedies for working-class distress in the deindustrialized heartlands of the Western world the panaceas of redistributionism, education, and antimonopolism are like prescriptions of aspirin for cancer. They may ameliorate the symptoms, but they do not cure the disease—the imbalance of power, within Western nation-states, between the overclass and the working class as a whole, including many exploited immigrant workers who labor for the affluent in the metropolitan hubs.
If banana republicanism is to be avoided as the fate of the Western democracies, reformers in America and Europe will have to do far more than buy off the population with a subsidy here or an antitrust lawsuit there. Indeed, if a package of minor, ameliorative reforms is handed down from the mountaintops of Davos or Aspen by a claque of benevolent billionaires and the technocrats and the politicians and intellectuals whom the billionaires subsidize, with little or no public participation or debate, the lack of voice and agency of most citizens will be made apparent in the most humiliating way.
What the racially and religiously diverse working-class majorities in the Western nations need is what they once possessed and no longer have: countervailing power. In the absence of mass-membership institutions comparable to the older grassroots parties, labor unions, and religious organizations, which can provide ordinary citizens with the collective power to check the abuses of the managerial elite, palliative reform at most can create oligarchy with a human face.
Michael Lind is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. This essay is adapted from his most recent book, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite, published on January 21st by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. © 2020 by Michael Lind.


theamericanconservative--2020-03-06--Elizabeth Warren Lost Because She’s Elizabeth Warren

Sexism had nothing to do with it .
The Massachusetts senator was unlikeable and showed contempt for the truth .
If there ’ s one good thing that ’ s come out of this long and excruciatingly stupid primary season , it ’ s the clumsy and undignified demise of Elizabeth Warren ’ s presidential campaign .
The Massachusetts senator has demonstrated a unique ability to provoke the ire of a wide range of groups in the American electorate , assembling a multigenerational , multiracial rainbow coalition of enemies from a broad spectrum of ethnic groups and socioeconomic backgrounds .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ should give credit where it ’ s due : Warren really did become the “ unity candidate ” that she always proclaimed herself to be .
She displayed an astounding capacity to bring together a polarized country around their shared distaste for her candidacy .
Compiling a complete discography of Warren ’ s detractors would be an impossible feat , but for the sake of partisan schadenfreude , we should briefly revisit the greatest hits .
These include the Native American tribal leaders who weren ’ t particularly fond of a wealthy white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gain ( even co-authoring a cooking guide titled The Pow Wow Chow Native American Cookbook ) , the Bernie Sanders supporters infuriated by Warren ’ s cynical attempts to paint their candidate as a woman-hating misogynist , police unions offended by Warren ’ s open dishonesty about violence in law enforcement , religious conservatives who found her contemptuous dismissal of anyone with traditionalist views of sexual morality to be in profoundly bad taste , and pro-lifers ( who still comprise 34 percent of the Democratic electorate ) for whom Warren ’ s radically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s worth noting , of course , that this is just a small slice of the groups that found Warren enormously unlikeable .
The senator ’ s casual-at-best relationship with the truth ( listing herself as as “ woman of color ” in Harvard ’ s faculty listing , claiming that she was fired from a teaching position for being pregnant , refusing to admit that her various spending plans would require raising taxes on the middle class , and so on ) probably didn ’ t help .
And shockingly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the woke activist base ( vocal support for reparations , pledging to let a transgender child pick her secretary of education , endorsing affirmative action for non-binary people ) paired with her technocratically manicured professorial wonkiness—she ’ s got a plan for that !
—never caught fire in the blue-collar neighborhoods in the Midwest and South .
For many of Warren ’ s surrogates , however , the senator ’ s chronic unpopularity is due not to her own shortcomings ( it never is ) , but to that perpetually vague cause of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ female race : the patriarchy .
From the bowels of woke Twitter , a predictably absurd post-Super Tuesday take reads : “ The total routing of Elizabeth Warren last night , the straight up disrespectful dismissal , after all that lady ’ s hard work – it ’ s absolutely sexist and patriarchal , and I don ’ t care to hear any other hot takes than that one .
Don ’ t @ me with no bulls**t. ” And another : “ Sen .
Warren was superb when facing off against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ businessmen : John Delaney and Michael Bloomberg .
Instead of believing their eyes and seeing her electability , many Americans believed their sexist ideas.
” And one more , for posterity : “ If Elizabeth Warren were a man , she would be the next POTUS .
Full stop .
Her gender is her biggest obstacle .
America has a long long long long long way to go.
” If a better sub-280 character summation of Warren ’ s eminent unelectability exists , I ’ m unaware of it .
Never mind that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Super Tuesday , and that those women were all rational agents rather than infantilized victims of “ internalized misogyny.
” Never mind that you generally need to provide evidence when you accuse the entire electorate of incorrigible sexism .
Democratic self-governance itself must be sexist .
Such is the danger of catering one ’ s campaign to the effete tastes of the New York Times editorial board : intersectionality just doesn ’ t play well with the American electorate , which is still significantly more conservative than its cultural overlords .
African-American voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s comparatively moderate candidacy on Super Tuesday—are significantly more conservative than their white progressive peers , even on issues of race .
It ’ s no surprise , then , that the self-satisfied brand of elite white progressivism that Warren represents turned out to be politically toxic .
And to the great shame of the senator ’ s Twitter-based apologists , no amount of hand-wringing about the heteropatriarchal sexism of their ( historically diverse ) electoral base can change that .
Nate Hochman is an undergraduate student at Colorado College and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follow him at Twitter @ njhochman .

If there’s one good thing that’s come out of this long and excruciatingly stupid primary season, it’s the clumsy and undignified demise of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign.
The Massachusetts senator has demonstrated a unique ability to provoke the ire of a wide range of groups in the American electorate, assembling a multigenerational, multiracial rainbow coalition of enemies from a broad spectrum of ethnic groups and socioeconomic backgrounds. In the spirit of charity, we should give credit where it’s due: Warren really did become the “unity candidate” that she always proclaimed herself to be. She displayed an astounding capacity to bring together a polarized country around their shared distaste for her candidacy.
Compiling a complete discography of Warren’s detractors would be an impossible feat, but for the sake of partisan schadenfreude, we should briefly revisit the greatest hits. These include the Native American tribal leaders who weren’t particularly fond of a wealthy white Harvard professor claiming their ethnicity for personal gain (even co-authoring a cooking guide titled The Pow Wow Chow Native American Cookbook), the Bernie Sanders supporters infuriated by Warren’s cynical attempts to paint their candidate as a woman-hating misogynist, police unions offended by Warren’s open dishonesty about violence in law enforcement, religious conservatives who found her contemptuous dismissal of anyone with traditionalist views of sexual morality to be in profoundly bad taste, and pro-lifers (who still comprise 34 percent of the Democratic electorate) for whom Warren’s radically pro-abortion policy objectives were unconscionable.
It’s worth noting, of course, that this is just a small slice of the groups that found Warren enormously unlikeable. The senator’s casual-at-best relationship with the truth (listing herself as as “woman of color” in Harvard’s faculty listing, claiming that she was fired from a teaching position for being pregnant, refusing to admit that her various spending plans would require raising taxes on the middle class, and so on) probably didn’t help. And shockingly, her painfully contrived attempts at catering to the woke activist base (vocal support for reparations, pledging to let a transgender child pick her secretary of education, endorsing affirmative action for non-binary people) paired with her technocratically manicured professorial wonkiness—she’s got a plan for that!—never caught fire in the blue-collar neighborhoods in the Midwest and South.
For many of Warren’s surrogates, however, the senator’s chronic unpopularity is due not to her own shortcomings (it never is), but to that perpetually vague cause of every malady to have ever befallen the female race: the patriarchy. From the bowels of woke Twitter, a predictably absurd post-Super Tuesday take reads: “The total routing of Elizabeth Warren last night, the straight up disrespectful dismissal, after all that lady’s hard work – it’s absolutely sexist and patriarchal, and I don’t care to hear any other hot takes than that one. Don’t @ me with no bulls**t.”
And another: “Sen. Warren was superb when facing off against the Trump Democrats, the uber-rich, cocky businessmen: John Delaney and Michael Bloomberg. Instead of believing their eyes and seeing her electability, many Americans believed their sexist ideas.”
And one more, for posterity: “If Elizabeth Warren were a man, she would be the next POTUS. Full stop. Her gender is her biggest obstacle. America has a long long long long long way to go.”
If a better sub-280 character summation of Warren’s eminent unelectability exists, I’m unaware of it.
Never mind that most women voted for other candidates on Super Tuesday, and that those women were all rational agents rather than infantilized victims of “internalized misogyny.” Never mind that you generally need to provide evidence when you accuse the entire electorate of incorrigible sexism. Democratic self-governance itself must be sexist.
Such is the danger of catering one’s campaign to the effete tastes of the New York Times editorial board: intersectionality just doesn’t play well with the American electorate, which is still significantly more conservative than its cultural overlords. African-American voters in particular—largely the constituency that elevated Joe Biden’s comparatively moderate candidacy on Super Tuesday—are significantly more conservative than their white progressive peers, even on issues of race.
It’s no surprise, then, that the self-satisfied brand of elite white progressivism that Warren represents turned out to be politically toxic. And to the great shame of the senator’s Twitter-based apologists, no amount of hand-wringing about the heteropatriarchal sexism of their (historically diverse) electoral base can change that.
Senator Warren, we hardly knew ye.
Nate Hochman is an undergraduate student at Colorado College and a Young Voices contributor. You can follow him at Twitter @njhochman.


theamericanconservative--2020-03-10--Opposing Standing Armies: A Great American Tradition

The founding fathers were almost completely averse to standing armies and believed they posed a dangerous threat to American liberty .
In contrast to the Navy , the Constitution stipulates that appropriations for the Army can ’ t be made for longer than two years .
Elbridge Gerry , a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the main architects of the Bill of Rights , went so far as to declare that a standing army is “ the bane of liberty.
” And in his 1989 book The Present Age , conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet quipped that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congress acted as if it was more afraid of a bona fide American army coming out of the war than it was of a British Victory.
” Prior to World War I , with a few notable exceptions such as the Civil War , the U.S. maintained a very small standing army , believing that decentralized state militias were the best way to defend the homeland .
These days , however , it seems one is more likely to find a dodo bird walking down the street than a politician inveighing against a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea seems laughably obtuse , if not flat-out insane .
But the truth is that such a view has been the norm throughout most of American history .
Before we can explore the consequences of a large standing army , we have to ask : what should be the goal of our nation ’ s defensive strategy ?
The founders believed it was to defend vital national interests that are necessary to preserve our existence .
Yet most of our military operations since World War II have strayed outside this narrow criteria .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ secure state in the history of the world .
We are the only great power in our hemisphere , and no one else on earth is capable of projecting enough power over the oceans to existentially threaten us .
Yet judging by our military spending and obsession with security , one would think we possess the geostrategic position of Poland in 1939 .
As Cato senior fellow John Mueller argues in an essay called “ Embracing Threatlessness , ” the only true external existential threat the United States could face would be if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and secure Eurasian hegemony .
And Mueller says such a possibility is so remote that we don ’ t need our vast military to defend against it .
In the unlikely event of a super-Hitler , he contends , we ’ d have plenty of time to prepare for him .
Instead , Mueller argues that a much reduced force would be more than capable of dealing with the relatively minor threats we face that don ’ t rise to the level of existential .
Aside from being unnecessary , having a giant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abuse by those in power .
The U.S. would not be able to engage in far-flung crusades to turn the Middle East into a shining bastion of democracy—which have only succeeded in driving Iraq into the arms of Iran , fomenting the spread of slave markets in Libya , and sparking a humanitarian crisis in Yemen—if it did not have vast legions under its command .
Beyond removing temptations toward nation-building , greatly shrinking the size of the standing army would also be a boon to liberty here at home .
The founders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead to tyranny .
It seems they had good reason to .
Congressman Eric Swalwell , a former Democratic presidential candidate , once vaguely threatened that if citizens revolted against his gun confiscation plans , the federal government would nuke them .
“ It would be a short war , ” he declared .
The truth of the matter is that without a federal army , no politician will be waging war against his own citizens .
Removing even that possibility could greatly aid in reducing domestic tensions , about which a recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Public Service at Georgetown University found that “ the average voter believes the U.S. is two-thirds of the way to the edge of a civil war.
” Those who want to scale back our military should have hope .
Around the country , state legislators are introducing “ Defend the Guard ” acts that essentially prohibit the state from deploying their National Guard units overseas at the request of the federal government unless there has been a full-on declaration of war .
Such bills have been introduced in Oklahoma , South Carolina , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more expected .
Unfortunately , none have advanced very far ( the Wyoming bill failed in February , even with Senator Rand Paul campaigning in person for its introduction into the legislature ) , but their proliferation clearly demonstrates that there is a growing demand to shrink the federal administration of the military and restrain its out-of-control militarism .
As is to be expected , this demand does not have much traction at the federal level .
Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute has documented the ways in which the military has previously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That being said , there is no doubt that the founders resisted the establishment of a large permanent standing army .
It seems their fears have proven all too prescient .
Perhaps going forward , advocates for a restrained U.S. foreign policy will be able not only to articulate the sensible reasons the founders held this belief , but also put forward concrete plans to change the status quo .
Zachary Yost is a Foreign Policy Fellow with Young Voices and a freelance writer and researcher who lives in Pittsburgh .
Follow @ @ @ @

The founding fathers were almost completely averse to standing armies and believed they posed a dangerous threat to American liberty.
In contrast to the Navy, the Constitution stipulates that appropriations for the Army can’t be made for longer than two years. Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the main architects of the Bill of Rights, went so far as to declare that a standing army is “the bane of liberty.” And in his 1989 book The Present Age, conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet quipped that “most of the time the Continental Congress acted as if it was more afraid of a bona fide American army coming out of the war than it was of a British Victory.”
Prior to World War I, with a few notable exceptions such as the Civil War, the U.S. maintained a very small standing army, believing that decentralized state militias were the best way to defend the homeland.
These days, however, it seems one is more likely to find a dodo bird walking down the street than a politician inveighing against a standing army. No doubt the very idea seems laughably obtuse, if not flat-out insane. But the truth is that such a view has been the norm throughout most of American history.
Before we can explore the consequences of a large standing army, we have to ask: what should be the goal of our nation’s defensive strategy? The founders believed it was to defend vital national interests that are necessary to preserve our existence. Yet most of our military operations since World War II have strayed outside this narrow criteria.
The U.S. is perhaps the most strategically secure state in the history of the world. We are the only great power in our hemisphere, and no one else on earth is capable of projecting enough power over the oceans to existentially threaten us. Yet judging by our military spending and obsession with security, one would think we possess the geostrategic position of Poland in 1939.
As Cato senior fellow John Mueller argues in an essay called “Embracing Threatlessness,” the only true external existential threat the United States could face would be if a “super-Hitler” were to emerge and secure Eurasian hegemony. And Mueller says such a possibility is so remote that we don’t need our vast military to defend against it. In the unlikely event of a super-Hitler, he contends, we’d have plenty of time to prepare for him. Instead, Mueller argues that a much reduced force would be more than capable of dealing with the relatively minor threats we face that don’t rise to the level of existential.
Aside from being unnecessary, having a giant military provides much temptation for misuse and abuse by those in power. The U.S. would not be able to engage in far-flung crusades to turn the Middle East into a shining bastion of democracy—which have only succeeded in driving Iraq into the arms of Iran, fomenting the spread of slave markets in Libya, and sparking a humanitarian crisis in Yemen—if it did not have vast legions under its command.
Beyond removing temptations toward nation-building, greatly shrinking the size of the standing army would also be a boon to liberty here at home. The founders worried that a large standing army would lead to tyranny. It seems they had good reason to. Congressman Eric Swalwell, a former Democratic presidential candidate, once vaguely threatened that if citizens revolted against his gun confiscation plans, the federal government would nuke them. “It would be a short war,” he declared.
The truth of the matter is that without a federal army, no politician will be waging war against his own citizens. Removing even that possibility could greatly aid in reducing domestic tensions, about which a recent poll by the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University found that “the average voter believes the U.S. is two-thirds of the way to the edge of a civil war.”
Those who want to scale back our military should have hope. Around the country, state legislators are introducing “Defend the Guard” acts that essentially prohibit the state from deploying their National Guard units overseas at the request of the federal government unless there has been a full-on declaration of war. Such bills have been introduced in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming, and West Virginia, with more expected.
Unfortunately, none have advanced very far (the Wyoming bill failed in February, even with Senator Rand Paul campaigning in person for its introduction into the legislature), but their proliferation clearly demonstrates that there is a growing demand to shrink the federal administration of the military and restrain its out-of-control militarism. As is to be expected, this demand does not have much traction at the federal level. Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute has documented the ways in which the military has previously blackmailed the states into killing similar resistance.
That being said, there is no doubt that the founders resisted the establishment of a large permanent standing army. It seems their fears have proven all too prescient. Perhaps going forward, advocates for a restrained U.S. foreign policy will be able not only to articulate the sensible reasons the founders held this belief, but also put forward concrete plans to change the status quo.
Zachary Yost is a Foreign Policy Fellow with Young Voices and a freelance writer and researcher who lives in Pittsburgh. Follow him @ZacharyYost.


theamericanconservative--2020-03-12--Yes to a Coronavirus Vaccine, No to More Government Slush Funds

WASHINGTON , DC - JANUARY 28 : Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks during a press conference on the coordinated public health response to the 2019 coronavirus ( 2019-nCoV ) on January 28 , 2020 in Washington , DC .
The virus , which originated in Wuhan , China , has infected 4,500 people and killed at least 109 , mostly in China .
Currently 110 people are being evaluated in the United States for infection , with five confirmed cases .
With Secretary Alex Azar is ( from left to right ) Centers for Disease Control and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Nancy Messonnier .
( Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images ) In a bitterly divided Washington , D.C. , few pieces of legislation have gotten passed as quickly or enjoyed as strong support as the $ 8.3 billion “ Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act , ” cobbled together in just 12 days and signed into law last Friday .
But as taxpayers know too well , speedily enacted bipartisan proposals are usually far from perfect .
While lawmakers reasonably granted the Department of Health and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in spending the lion ’ s share of the funds , the federal government seems eager to develop tests and treatments of their own .
Despite the abysmal track record of the feds when it comes to producing and developing medical supplies , bureaucrats still feel the need to sweep private innovation under the rug .
Patients will not get better unless Washington allows companies and innovators to play their part in stopping the coronavirus .
The legislation creates a $ 3 billion “ Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ development of necessary countermeasures and vaccines.
” Interestingly , the government is only authorizing a small fraction of the total— $ 300 million—to purchase privately developed vaccines and medicines ; it seems more interested in direct development .
Given its track record spearheading its own drug projects , this bizarre preference is unlikely to end well .
At the height of the Zika outbreak in 2016 , the U.S. Army decided to kickstart research and development for a Zika vaccine and license it on an exclusive basis .
The Army had some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drug manufacturer Sanofi for further experimentation and development .
Sanofi ’ s decision to partner with the Army was based on $ 43 million in promised research funding by HHS and an additional $ 130 million if the vaccine made it to later testing phases .
But HHS proved fickle and withdrew its commitment once the Zika virus showed signs of slowing down .
Sanofi then announced that it did “ not intend to continue development of , or seek a license from , the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Government officials claimed that , because the virus was on the wane , suddenly backtracking from the commitment was justifiable .
But as global health bodies have pointed out , dozens of countries remain at risk for outbreaks .
HHS bureaucrats are notoriously fickle , especially when they come under fire from advocacy groups with unreasonable requests .
In 2017 , Eric Sagonowsky of FiercePharma reported that “ the collaboration [ between Sanofi and the government ] had come under intense public and political scrutiny this year as critics demanded pricing guarantees if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taxpayer-funded research.
” These pressure groups typically fail to mention the immense costs of bringing life-saving treatments to market due to an onerous Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) approvals process .
It can take manufacturers a decade and more than $ 2 billion to bring a medication to market , and excessive FDA testing requirements hinder patient access to care .
Currently , hundreds of COVID-19 patients are being treated with the antiviral drug called Remdesivir , which has had promising initial results but is not yet FDA approved .
While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take the medication through their “ compassionate use ” program , this is only permitted on a limited , last-resort basis , and the drug remains unavailable to most of the population .
Producers of novel treatments may need to wait months to bring life-saving therapies to market and face the real risk of getting FDA rejection letters if , say , new evidence were to come to light on the drug ’ s efficacy after the application was submitted .
Lawmakers looking to keep COVID-19 in check must do more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The government must clear the way for private innovators to develop life-saving treatments quickly and at minimal cost .
Until that happens , expect a continued panorama of pandemic headlines .
Ross Marchand is the director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance .

In a bitterly divided Washington, D.C., few pieces of legislation have gotten passed as quickly or enjoyed as strong support as the $8.3 billion “Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act,” cobbled together in just 12 days and signed into law last Friday. But as taxpayers know too well, speedily enacted bipartisan proposals are usually far from perfect.
While lawmakers reasonably granted the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) considerable flexibility in spending the lion’s share of the funds, the federal government seems eager to develop tests and treatments of their own. Despite the abysmal track record of the feds when it comes to producing and developing medical supplies, bureaucrats still feel the need to sweep private innovation under the rug. Patients will not get better unless Washington allows companies and innovators to play their part in stopping the coronavirus.
The legislation creates a $3 billion “Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund,” which will be used to fund the “development of necessary countermeasures and vaccines.” Interestingly, the government is only authorizing a small fraction of the total—$300 million—to purchase privately developed vaccines and medicines; it seems more interested in direct development. Given its track record spearheading its own drug projects, this bizarre preference is unlikely to end well.
At the height of the Zika outbreak in 2016, the U.S. Army decided to kickstart research and development for a Zika vaccine and license it on an exclusive basis. The Army had some initial success and passed the baton to drug manufacturer Sanofi for further experimentation and development. Sanofi’s decision to partner with the Army was based on $43 million in promised research funding by HHS and an additional $130 million if the vaccine made it to later testing phases.
But HHS proved fickle and withdrew its commitment once the Zika virus showed signs of slowing down. Sanofi then announced that it did “not intend to continue development of, or seek a license from, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research for the Zika vaccine candidate at this time.” Government officials claimed that, because the virus was on the wane, suddenly backtracking from the commitment was justifiable. But as global health bodies have pointed out, dozens of countries remain at risk for outbreaks.
HHS bureaucrats are notoriously fickle, especially when they come under fire from advocacy groups with unreasonable requests. In 2017, Eric Sagonowsky of FiercePharma reported that “the collaboration [between Sanofi and the government] had come under intense public and political scrutiny this year as critics demanded pricing guarantees if a commercial vaccine grew out of the taxpayer-funded research.” These pressure groups typically fail to mention the immense costs of bringing life-saving treatments to market due to an onerous Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals process. It can take manufacturers a decade and more than $2 billion to bring a medication to market, and excessive FDA testing requirements hinder patient access to care.
Currently, hundreds of COVID-19 patients are being treated with the antiviral drug called Remdesivir, which has had promising initial results but is not yet FDA approved. While the agency is allowing seriously ill patients to take the medication through their “compassionate use” program, this is only permitted on a limited, last-resort basis, and the drug remains unavailable to most of the population. Producers of novel treatments may need to wait months to bring life-saving therapies to market and face the real risk of getting FDA rejection letters if, say, new evidence were to come to light on the drug’s efficacy after the application was submitted.
Lawmakers looking to keep COVID-19 in check must do more than create $3 billion slush funds. The government must clear the way for private innovators to develop life-saving treatments quickly and at minimal cost. Until that happens, expect a continued panorama of pandemic headlines.
Ross Marchand is the director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.