Month: March 2020

Welcome to the 3rd World

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The US State Department is begging lesser developed nations for medical supplies.

This is what 45 years of embracing neoliberal policies, or, to put it in another way, we have been eating our seed corn:

The U.S. State Department is instructing its top diplomats to press governments and businesses in Eastern Europe and Eurasia to ramp up exports and production of life-saving medical equipment and protective gear for the United States, part of a desperate diplomatic campaign to fill major shortcomings in the U.S. medical system amid a rising death toll from the new coronavirus.

The appeal comes as European governments are themselves struggling to cope with one of the worst pandemics to spread around the globe since the 1918 Spanish flu. It represents a stark turnaround for the United States, which has traditionally taken the lead in trying to help other less-developed countries contend with major humanitarian disasters and epidemics.

The request could also undercut claims by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that the United States can handle demands for tests and medical equipment on its own, declining to fully implement the Defense Production Act to mandate that U.S. companies produce these products. “We have so many companies making so many products—every product that you mentioned, plus ventilators and everything else. We have car companies—without having to use the act. If I don’t have to use—specifically, we have the act to use, in case we need it. But we have so many things being made right now by so many—they’ve just stepped up,” Trump said at a press conference on March 21.

Gee, you really think that, “The request could also undercut claims by U.S. President Donald Trump?”

Really?

Of Course Texas Joins In

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Joining with Ohio, Texas is using the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to ban abortions.

Can we please give it back to Mexico?

The governor and attorney general of Texas are moving to ban most abortions in the state during the coronavirus outbreak, declaring they don’t qualify as essential surgeries.

 Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday that the order issued over the weekend by Gov. Greg Abbott barred “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”

 Failure to comply with the order can result in penalties of up to $1,000 or 180 days of jail time, Paxton said.

 “No one is exempt from the governor’s executive order on medically unnecessary surgeries and procedures, including abortion providers,” Paxton said. “Those who violate the governor’s order will be met with the full force of the law.”

 ………

Amid the moves by Ohio and Texas, a coalition of anti-abortion groups urged its allies across the nation to ask governors to ban most abortions on the grounds they were not essential.

“If abortion is a ‘choice’ then abortion is an elective procedure,” said Mark Harrington, president of the anti-abortion group Created Equal.

These people are beneath contempt.

This is not the opposition, it is the enemy, and it should be treated as such.

It’s Like Watching Brezhnev in 1981

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President Trump and Mitch McConnell are trying to put a corporate bailout ahead of families. It’s simply wrong. We need to be focused on helping hardworking Americans, communities, and small businesses — not handing big corporations a blank check. pic.twitter.com/tMBZm26h3y

— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 23, 2020

We waited a week for Joe Biden to give a statement on the Covid-19 pandemic, and we got a word salad delivered with all the vigor of Terri Schiavo.

Joe Biden, and his campaign, need to step up their game.

This is not just because he’s now the front-runner in the Democratic Presidential primary, but because he can not get the media attention necessary to shine the light Donald Trump’s attempt to make any potential economic bailout from the current emergency a way to line his own pockets.

I understand that Biden and his campaign staff think that the primary is over, and they want to give him a few days off, but they really need to turn the dial to 11 right now.

Linkage

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Have some SNL parody commercials:

Trump Wants a $½ Trillion Slush Fund. the Democrats Just Voted It Down.

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They did so for a good reason:

Senate Democrats on Sunday blocked action on an emerging deal to prop up an economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, paralyzing the progress of a nearly $2 trillion government rescue package they said failed to adequately protect workers or impose strict enough restrictions on bailed-out businesses.

The party-line vote was a stunning setback after three days of fast-paced negotiations between senators and administration officials to reach a bipartisan compromise on legislation that is expected to be the largest economic stimulus package in American history — now expected to cost $1.8 trillion or more. In a 47-to-47 vote, the Senate fell short of the 60 votes that would have been needed to advance the measure, even as talks continued behind the scenes between Democrats and the White House to salvage a compromise.

There is an even better reason not mentioned, that the plan included a $½ trillion slush fund that Trump could use for his own personal of political benefit:

While the indicators are lagging, the U.S. economy is in a recession that will very likely be extremely deep. It’s likely that real GDP falls at double-digit pace in the quarter that begins next month and the unemployment rate more than doubles. If that sounds implausible, history shows that in sharp downturns, the unemployment rate takes the elevator up and the stairs down.

………

But even as Congress must speed toward completion and passage of this legislation, there is time to avoid wasting resources, and there is one, large part of the bill—$500 billion, according to the Washington Post—that threatens to create a “slush fund” for businesses with virtually no oversight, no benefits for workers, and far too much discretion for President Trump to dole out goodies to himself and his cronies.

The lending mechanism in question allocates $500 billion to backstop (i.e., repayment is guaranteed by the government) private-sector loans to the tune of $50 billion to airlines, $8 billion for cargo carriers, $17 billion for businesses “critical to national security,” and $425 billion for businesses, states, and cities.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong and a lot right with providing resources of these magnitudes for businesses. The bill also proposes $350 billion for small business with a smart, built-in incentive to help workers: if employers use a portion of the loan to maintain their payrolls, that portion is forgiven.

But the $500 billion carries no such incentives (there is a requirement that CEO can’t raise their pay over last year’s level, but that could mean just “restricting” a CEO to a $15 million paycheck, an extremely mild condition). Nor does there appear to be adequate oversight or “underwriting,” the process by which banks determine credit worthiness, leading Sen. Warren to tweet that it “sounds like Trump hotel properties like Mar-a-Largo could receive huge bags of cash – and then fire their workers – if Steve Mnuchin decides to do a solid for his boss with taxpayer dollars.”

………

Yes, time is of the essence, but Democrats must use their leverage to remove this Trump/Mnuchin slush fund while they quickly negotiate the attaching of pro-worker conditionality to it. The main thing for this moment is to get the help to families (direct cash) and small businesses out the door.

There is no obvious reason that we can’t do something similar for larger firms by making loans available for purposes of meeting their payrolls. If the airlines and other especially hard hit businesses need additional assistance to get through the crisis, we can work through a well-designed package that ensures both that shareholders and top executives share the pain and that President Trump can’t use the money to help himself and his friends.

If the funds can be used in a corrupt manner, the Trump administration WILL use those funds a corrupt manner.

They will choose to benefit the Trumps, and the Kushners, and politically connected Republicans unless accountability is built into the plan.

Politics in the Coronavirus Response

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The Republican Attorney General of Ohio has decided to use the corona virus as a way to shut down abortion clinics in the state.

When Democrats talk about not politicizing the crisis, you need to understand that the Republicans ARE politicizing the crisis as we speak:

Ohio’s attorney general has ordered clinics to halt many abortions under a new statewide measure to conserve health-care resources amid the coronavirus pandemic, going against the urgings of many medical professionals.

Officials in Washington state and Massachusetts have clarified that similar orders pausing elective surgeries do not apply to abortions, and several national medical associations earlier this week advised against canceling or delaying the procedures — a key part of “comprehensive health care,” they said — because of the coronavirus outbreak. But Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) on Friday and Saturday ordered several facilities, about which he said the Health Department has received complaints, to stop their “nonessential” abortions.

As clinics say they will proceed undeterred, the fight over what constitutes essential care in Ohio could be the first of many as more states heed the U.S. government’s calls for hospitals to suspend unneeded operations and as doctors and nurses warn they’re running out of masks, gowns and drugs.

Seriously, the Democrats are bringing a rubber chicken to a gun-fight.

Could Not Happen to a More Deserving Rat-F%$#

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Senator Rand Paul, who voted against Covid-19 relief, is the first Senator to test positive for the virus.

I am intensely amused by this. Does this make me a bad person?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office announced on Twitter Sunday.

 Why it matters: He’s the first U.S. senator to test positive. According to his office, Paul is asymptomatic and was not aware of making direct contact with an infected person.

  • Paul, a licensed physician and notorious deficit hawk, was the only senator to vote against a bipartisan $8 billion deal to provide emergency coronavirus funding earlier this month.

  • He sought to introduce an amendment that would take the funding from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, but it was voted down 80-16.

It’s the little things that make life good.

This is one of them.

Of Course They Are

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Never underestimate the desire of law enforcement to use a crisis to subvert our constitutional rights.

Now they are trying to use the Covid-19 Pandemic to allow for infinite detention without charge:

The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.

………

The DOJ has requested Congress allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” according to draft language obtained by Politico. This would be applicable to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil processes and proceedings.” They justify this by saying currently judges can pause judicial proceedings in an emergency but that new legislation would allow them to apply it “in a consistent manner.”

But the Constitution grants citizens habeas corpus which gives arrestees the right to appear in front of a judge and ask to be released before trial. Enacting legislation like the DOJ wants would essentially suspend habeas corpus indefinitely until the emergency ended. Further, DOJ asked Congress to suspend the statute of limitations on criminal investigations and civil proceedings during the emergency until a year after it ended.

Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told Politico the measure was “terrifying,” saying, “Not only would it be a violation of [habeas corpus], but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest.’ So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”

While it’s natural to blame Trump and his Evil Minions™ for this, the blame needs to be laid at the feet of the existing US State Security Apparatus.

They did the same thing following 911, because they have a wish list of Constitutional atrocities that they have in their back pockets for whatever emergency pops up.

Where the F%$# is Joe Biden?

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Given the current pandemic, and Donald Trump’s mismanagement of it and his lying, Joe Biden should be proclaiming Trump’s failures from the heavens.

In the 10 days since the debates, he’s been basically invisible.

All that we have gotten is a promise of some briefings that may start in the next few days.

His campaign is missing a big opportunity to challenge the narrative that Trump is promulgating.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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This “smart, simple, sustainable” water bottle requires:
* a custom water bottle
* an iPhone app
* special canisters
* 3 of them actually
* a monthly payment
* I would assume a lithium ion battery?
* yes, it’s a four day lithium ion battery in my sustainable water bottle pic.twitter.com/Qi3BJoMDZU

— Lee Edwards 🏳️‍🌈🦾 (@terronk) March 7, 2020

Seriously, this takes the internet of sh%$ to a whole new depth.

Also, have the people funding this  never heard of the Juicero fiasco?

OK, This Sucks

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Because of the economic implosion from the corona virus, my employer, Kingspan (Tate Access Floors) is cutting wages for all of its employees by 40% in April and May, and suspending its dividend.

Kingspan will continue to pay 60% to workers who have been locked down to those who are required to shelter in place, which is a rather humane approach to all of this.

Truly shared sacrifice is something to be supported.

Considering my “Pinko” proclivities, this is an opportunity for my butt to cash checks that my mouth wrote:

Kingspan will cut executive pay by 50% and implement a 40% cut for the rest of its 14,500 staff for two months due to unprecedented production and demand disruption from coronavirus, according to a letter to staff obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

………

Kingspan, which earlier announced it would withdraw its proposed final dividend for 2019 and had a strong balance sheet with more than 1 billion euros in cash and committed undrawn bank facilities, would also immediately freeze all spending that is not business critical, Murtagh said in the message to staff.

Needless to say, things will be tight for a while.

If the governor locks down the state of Maryland, as have the governors of California, Pennsylvania, and New York, I’ll work from home.  I have my work laptop at home, and can VPN in.

Do not expect updates, as I try NOT to blog about my work.

Today in IP Insanity

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In Italy, hospitals could not operate ventilators to treat severely ill coronvirus patients, because a crucial, and very expensive, valve was not available from the manufacturer.

A group of local tech types took a valve, and figured out how to 3D print the valve for a fraction of the cost.

They were promptly threatened with a lawsuit by the manufacturer.

We need to massively reduce the scope of IP:

Update: One of the people who helped 3D-print the valve in Brescia says that they didn’t receive a legal threat from the original manufacturer, Intersurgical, according to a new report in The Verge. Another person who helped make things happen, Massimo Temporelli, who earlier said they received legal threats for alleged patent infringement, is quoted as saying: “The group we asked for the files refused and said it was illegal”. Intersurgical also denies threatening to sue. It states that it could not supply details for the valve because of “medical manufacturing regulations”. Another news item says the official list price was not as high as the original Italian report suggested, but without giving a revised figure. Whatever the details, the episode underlines why the 3D files of these kind of devices should be made available routinely to hospitals. That would allow them print in cases of urgent need, regardless of any claimed patents, so that this kind of situation doesn’t arise at all, and lives are not put at risk. Original story follows:

Techdirt has just written about the extraordinary legal action taken against a company producing Covid-19 tests. Sadly, it’s not the only example of some individuals putting profits before people. Here’s a story from Italy, which is currently seeing more new coronavirus cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world. Last Thursday, a hospital in Brescia, in the north of Italy, needed supplies of special valves in order to use breathing equipment to help keep Covid-19 patients alive in intensive care (original in Italian). The manufacturer was unable to provide them because of the demand for this particular valve. The Metro site explains what happened next:

With the help of the editor of a local newspaper Giornale di Brescia and tech expert Massimo Temporelli, doctors launched a search for a 3D printer — a devise that produces three dimensional objects from computer designs.

Word soon reached Fracassi, a pharmaceutical company boss in possession of the coveted machine. He immediately brought his device to the hospital and, in just a few hours, redesigned and then produced the missing piece.

Actually, it wasn’t quite as simple as that suggests. Business Insider Italia explains that even though the original manufacturer was unable to supply the part, it refused to share the relevant 3D file with Fracassi to help him print the valve. It even went so far as to threaten him for patent infringement if he tried to do so on his own. Since lives were at stake, he went ahead anyway, creating the 3D file from scratch. According to the Metro article, he produced an initial batch of ten, and then 100 more, all for free. Fracassi admits that his 3D-printed versions might not be very durable or re-usable. But when it’s possible to make replacements so cheaply — each 3D-printed part costs just one euro, or roughly a dollar — that isn’t a problem. At least it wouldn’t be, except for that threat of legal action, which is also why Fracassi doesn’t dare share his 3D file with other hospitals, despite their desperate need for these valves.

This sort of IP related bullsh%$ does not, as the Constitution demands, “Promote the progress of science and useful arts.”

It is an anchor dragging down our society.

Why to Aggressively Prosecute Fraud

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Even if you don’t win, aggressive prosecution deters the creation of a criminogenic ecosystem.

Case in point, Facebook, which has knowingly been defrauding its advertisers for years:

New court documents from the lawsuit, which was filed in Northern California in 2018 by a small-business owner, claim that Facebook personnel knew that its so-called potential reach metric, used to inform advertisers of their potential audience size, was “inflated and misleading”.

The documents go on to name chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and David Wehner, Facebook’s financial officer, in the context of internal communications in which they were involved in 2017. Their remarks and actions have largely been redacted from the documents, however, on the grounds that they are commercially sensitive for Facebook.

The lawsuit claims that Facebook represents the potential reach metric as a measure of how many people a given marketer could reach with an advertisement. However, it actually indicates the total number of accounts that the marketer could reach — a figure that could include fake and duplicated accounts, according to the allegations.

In some cases, the number cited for potential audience size in certain US states and demographics was actually larger than the population size as recorded in census figures, it claimed.

………

The new court documents allege that some employees “expressed concerns” about the alleged “inflation” of potential reach but no action has been taken.

One filing alleged that Ms Sandberg made “substantive comments” in a meeting in October 2017 where potential reach was discussed.

Mr Wehner also discussed fake and duplicate accounts in a meeting the same month, but on a later earnings call “did not disclose the direct impact of duplicate and fake accounts . . . on potential reach”, according to the complainants.

Seriously, is there a business in Silicon Valley founded in this millennium which does not have fraud at the core of its business deception.

Actually, we could expand this to pretty much every VC funded business over the past 20 years.

Not Enough Bullets

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The masters of the world in Silicon Valley, as always, think that they are excused from the rules that us mere mortals have to follow.

In this case, they are ignoring the rules of basic biology, because they believe that they can disrupt their way out of a pandemic:

Michael Saylor does not often send all-staff emails to the more than 2,000 employees at Microstrategy, a business intelligence firm headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia. So the chief executive’s 3,000-word missive on Monday afternoon with the subject line My Thoughts on Covid-19 got his employees’ attention.

“It is soul-stealing and debilliating [sic] to embrace the notion of social distancing & economic hibernation,” Saylor wrote in an impassioned argument against adopting the aggressive responses to the coronavirus pandemic that public health authorities are advising. “If we wish to maintain our productivity, we need to continue working in [our] offices.”

As companies around the world adjust to the reality of the coronavirus pandemic, including by allowing their employees to work from home in compliance with the national guidelines of many governments, some executives are attempting to continue doing business as usual. The trend is notable in the tech industry, where computer-based work can generally be performed from anywhere, but where the culture has often rewarded innovative and “disruptive” leaders who buck conventional wisdom.

Saylor argued that the “economic damage” of social distancing and quarantines was greater than “the theoretical benefit of slowing down a virus” and suggested that it would make more sense to “quarantine the 40 million elderly retired, immune compromised people who no longer need to work or get educated”.

………

Elon Musk, billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, prompted considerable consternation when he tweeted, “The coronavirus panic is dumb” to his 32.3 million followers on 6 March. Despite widespread criticism of his message, which flew in the face of public health efforts to convince the general population to take the spread of the virus seriously, Musk has continued to downplay the threat.

“As a basis for comparison, the risk of death from C19 is *vastly* less than the risk of death from driving your car home,” Musk wrote in an email to SpaceX employees, according to BuzzFeed News. “There are about 36 thousand automotive deaths per deaths [sic], as compared to 36 so far this year for C19.”

On Tuesday, thousands of factory workers at Tesla’s plant in the San Francisco Bay area reported to work, despite a “shelter-in-place” order that was supposed to shutter all “non-essential” businesses. Musk told factory employees to stay home “if you feel the slightest bit ill or even uncomfortable”, the Los Angeles Times reported. By Tuesday afternoon, the local sheriff’s office announced that Tesla was not an essential business and could only maintain “minimum basic operations”.  (As an aside here, Musk will get a multi BILLION dollar payoff in the next few months if he manages to juice the stock price sufficiently)

………

Another billionaire, venture capitalist Tim Draper, tweeted on 14 March, “The fear is far worse than the virus. The governments have it wrong. Stay open for business. If not, so many more people will die from a crashing economy than from this virus.” 

The masters of the universe believe that their personal gains outweigh the health of the rest of society, because they are a bunch or nasty-ass psychopaths.

Hoo Boy!

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Jobless claims just rose by ⅓ over last week.

When you consider that the full impact of COVID-19 wasn’t seen last week, this is alarming, particularly since last week was only the leading edge of the disruption from the pandemic:

The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits surged by 70,000 in mid-March to a 2- 1/2-year high as the coronavirus shut down large sections of the economy. And the worst is still yet to come with the crisis triggering waves of layoffs.

Initial jobless claims climbed to a seasonally adjusted 281,000 from 211,000 in the seven days ended March 14, the government said Thursday. That’s one of the biggest one-week increases ever and puts jobless claims at the highest level since September 2017.

This is almost 200,000 *initial* claims in CA over the past 3 days.

Back to 1986, the maximum number of WEEKLY initial claims in California is 115,462. https://t.co/zY4Ib7og6V

— Aaron Sojourner (@aaronsojourner) March 19, 2020

The numbers from the first 3 days of California are even grimmer, and the online applications have been hindered by overloaded websites crashing at unemployment offices.

Given those numbers, it is not unreasonable to expect over a ¼ million applications in California, which scaled across the country, would have initial unemployment claims of around 2 million nationwide.

By comparison, the maximum number of initial unemployment claims since 1967 was 671,000 in September of 1982.

Next week promises to be a real record breaker.

By comparison, the highest level of unemployment claims during the great recession, was about

A Bright Side to the Corona Virus Pandemic

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It looks like WeWork founder, and bunco artist, Adam Neumann may miss out on some of his payday upon leaving the firm, because SoftBank will reverse itself on its stock purchases because of the disruptions from COVID-19:

SoftBank Group Corp. is backing away from part of its planned bailout of WeWork, people familiar with the matter said, privately citing several regulatory investigations of the office-sharing company.

A notice sent to WeWork shareholders Tuesday said that SoftBank believes regulatory probes into the startup’s business, including from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department, give it an out under the deal struck last fall to purchase $3 billion of WeWork shares from existing investors.

That would include Adam Neumann, former chief executive of WeWork parent We Co., who had the right to sell up to $970 million in stock as part of the October deal that led to his ouster from the company’s board.

The development won’t affect the $5 billion lifeline SoftBank agreed to give WeWork directly—cash the startup badly needed then as it ran out of runway, and which it is likely to continue to need as the worsening coronavirus outbreak empties out its desks.

Here’s hoping that Neumann walks away without his billion dollar bailout.

Here’s also hoping that he spends a fair amount of time in jail, as a warning to others.  (Same goes for Elizabeth Holmes)