Ciceronian Review

The Evil Turtle

Mitch McConnell now claims that the reason Trump has bungled everything to do with the Covid-19 pandemic is because House Democrats were mean to him.  The impeachment, which never had a chance in the Senate, was so frightening to Trump that he could not pay attention to anything else until he was acquitted.  So the greatest something ever can't manage under pressure?  Presidential timber if timber here is less than balsa wood. 

Trump has plenty fo advisors and plenty of well-trained and knowledgeable scientists who advise him about the pandemic, and it is his job to look to the welfare fo the country whether or not it is convenient for him at the time.  Really, only one thing at a time for Père Ubu?  How is it Clinton accomplished things during the investigation and impeachment proceedings?  Why is it that the Republican politicians are incapable of taking responsibility for anything?  That is an overstatement.  There are some lights of integrity, Romney for example.  Mike Lee, I am sad to say, is too often playing lickspittle to Trump. 

 

UPDATE:

To McConnell's statements, Père Ubu says 'not so'.

“I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached, okay?” Trump said. “And I think that’s a great tribute to something, maybe it’s a tribute to me, but I don’t think I would have acted any differently, or I don’t think I would have acted any faster.” 

Still Cloudy in the East

What interesting politics in Israel.  Gantz has destroyed his Blue and White Party to become Speaker of the Knesset and joint Netanyahu's government.  The news coverage so far is not helpful because it says so little.  There has been a crisis in Israel, not just political in teh stalemate elections, but of a constitutional level.  The government canceled all trials (saving Netanyahu), the Speaker was not convening Knesset and necessary supervisory committees were not being formed.  The Supreme Court issued orders.  I have not found coverage of the newer developments.  I do not expect it will mean much for the Palestinian citizens of Israel or the residents of Occupied Territories, but that s not the only set of issues to care about.  The democratic character of the state is important.  (Consider the drift in Hungary to an authoritarian, if not neo-fascist state --will the Eu ever act on that front?)  

What did Gantz get out the deal with Netanyahu, and what is the deal between them?  Almost nothing in the US press.  There is only the pandemic, lots of not particularly informative stories.  An inevitability in such an emergency.

Some of what is going on is discussed on LawFare, here.  Updated to cover the appalling actions of Speaker Edelstein in refusing to comply with the Court's order.  Th Court should have taken a more direct and affirmative stand -- contempt finding against Edelstein. 

 

 

At a Wrong Time

Europe is in quarantine.  (The Scandinavian countries are not in mandatory quarantine.) The US is in quarantine.  At least some of the States are imposing it.  Not Texas, of course, because there what matters is economic activity.  The Lieutenant Governor thinks that old folks, or grandparents at least, are and should be happy to die from Covid-19 if that is the price of renewed economic growth.  He is a Republican, which is unfortunate for that party.  I will be surprised if he is not forgiven and re-elected.  Texas is a place with loose morals.  

Nevertheless, the inexorable logic of capitalism grinds on.  I have this week received adverts for car rental companies wanting to help me on a vacation.  From Hertz, special deals on rentals in the US.  From Europcar, specials on rentals for travel to and in Sweden.  It is interesting that there is some value in continuing to advertise in these circumstances -- it can't result in much  business, so I am guessing the aim is just to keep the trade-name alive for whenever the limitations end?

The economic effects of the virus are in fact frightening.  But not for the libertarian economists.  Tabarrok sees no reason to limit use of rescue funds for stock buybacks. Buybacks are, after all, just a version of dividend.  And, one supposes, a load of cash from the government is just a load of cash and we should let the recipient corporations do with the cash as they please.  Really it makes no difference who gets the money because, well, I am not sure that the story is there.  Maybe it is trickle down or maybe some theory that we need to care for the managerial and top wealth groups because they are better and needed to get the economy running again.  The point really is that when we think of the system we sometimes miss that it is a system with parts. 

 

More Subsidy Please

In the US, the Covid-19 pandemic has work for Uber and Lyft difficult and dangerous.  Drivers file for unemployment benefits.  Uber and Lyft won't report wages to the States, so there are serious obstacles to obtaining the benefit.  Uber and Lyft send letters to Père Ubu:

"And in a letter to President Trump on Monday, Mr. Khosrowshahi asked that any economic stimulus or coronavirus-related legislation provide “protections and benefits for independent workers,” along with “the opportunity to legally provide them with a real safety net going forward.” A Lyft spokeswoman said her company was also pushing to extend any forthcoming stimulus to drivers, and said, “The vast majority of drivers on the Lyft platform use it to earn supplemental income,” rather than as a primary job."

Less indirectly, Uber wants benefits for its employees (who are not its employees) so that its employees (who are not its employees) funded by the general tax receipts.  Because then Uber and Lyft can continue to not pay their employees (who are not their employees) and continue their business plan of obtaining subsidies as the way to profit. 

Quite like Elon Musk, come to think of it.  The brave entrepreneurs who prefer that someone else assume the risks of their innovations.  Sounds like 2008.

The drivers should be covered and Uber and Lyft should report their wages and pay the insurance, taxes, and benefits.

 

Trouble in Democracy

Troubled democracies in Israel and India.  Israel finished its third election of the last 12 months without a clear victor.  Although a government is being formed, it excludes the third largest party grouping, the Joint List.  Gantz will form a government (or try) with the support of the Joint List but without its participation in the government.  That is because Joint List is an Palestinian grouping, and, though Israel is an electoral democracy it is also a state that has turned in the direction of apartheid.  It is, apparently, "unthinkable" that Palestinian citizens participate in the government because they are, after all, not Jews.  But things in India are worse.  There, in addition to the anti-Muslim citizenship law that BJP pushed through, there have been riots in Dehli -- more like pogroms -- by Hindus against Muslims.  The police, as is the case too often there, were either safely ensconced behind locked gates or out directing attacks on Muslim and Muslim owned businesses.

It is one thing when China imprisons Uighers and sends everyone off to indoctrination centers.  One can hardly expect the Chinese government to behave much better.  It has no record of doing so.  But one can ask more of India and Israel, and, come to it, Hungary and, well, the list is getting long or has always been long. 

The world is run by Ubu's children

 

Romney Land

Trump has a sort of plan for the economic effects of the pandemic.  the key piece is a cut in payroll taxes.  The tax is about 12-15% of gross wages, split between employer and employee and paid entirely by the sef-employed.  The cut would be something like a 7 or 8% increase in income gorss, less net because the added income is subject to other taxes (like income tax).  So his plan is to give employees and other worders a small increase in income as a way of stimulating the economy.

For those who are unemployed, or about to be unemployed or furloughed, how the cut any use?  One normally gets no paycheck when not employed and so payroll taxes are not an issue.  More and more workers are going to be fired or furloughed as time passes, which means the cuts mean less and less even on their own terms.  Marriott, for example, is furlouging tens of thousands (no wages but keep health benefits).  Are those people getting anything forma payroll tax?

There is this odd loathing among certain political groups for giving human beings a hand, giving money to the actual consumers, the folks who need to pay rent, and buy food, and so on.  No such hesitancy about handing funds over to corporations, like airlines and cruise lines.  I suppose the airlines getting a big gift might lead them to keep more people on payroll.  Maybe.  In the recent past, i.e., since 2008, such gifts to corporations have not turned into employment.  The gifts turned into cash in the corporate bank accounts, retained and sometimes sent off to shareholders.  Not helpful in these circumstances when what is needed are ways to fund the daily lives of people.

It is a strange world when Mitt Romney seems like a leftist.  Principles can lead us into odd lands indeed.

Alfred Jarry As Nostradamus

The evidence is mounting that Alfred Jarry, the great pataphysician, foresaw the state of the United States over one hundred years ago.  Père Ubu was not going to be kind of Poland, but of the United States.  As explained here in the London Review.  (But someone else was there before -- Charles Simic as a friend pointed out.    Leiter calls him a big baby, but the Big Baby of graphic fame is a rather more rational and intelligent person, or entity anyway. 

It is a bit obscure I suppose.  But Père Ubu realy does seem the accurate forerunner, model, idea of Trump. 
And his handling of Covi-19 pandemic is challenged only by Boris Johnson's call for herd immunity in the UK for lack of reason.  But Johnson would free up a lot of real estate for vacation homes in, for example, London.  History is a kind of consolation.

Maybe No One Was On First

The US Soccer Federation filed its opposition to the Women Player's summary judgment motion earlier this week.  The Women are suing on equal pay claims.  The opposition made a lot of news, none of it good for the USSF.  One of the arguments USSF advances is that the men and women play in different sports, that the men face more hostile audiences and that makes their games materially different from (and, I suppose, more challenging) than games the women play.  (You can find it about page 14-15.) It is a foolish argument I think, but plenty of people have made that point.  The USSF faced a great backlash and the President has now resigned as part of the response.  In his resignation announcement, he stated that he had not fully read the opposition brief before it was filed.  Also, USSF has moved the work in the case to a new law firm.  The case was at Seyfarth Shaw -- the folks who wrote and filed the opposition -- to Latham & Watkins.  The news is all about USSF and not much notice has been taken of the legal practice parts of the story.

There are interesting lessons about litigation practice in the story.  Assume that the USSF President did not read the brief before it was filed. 

Why was that?  Did he just not get to it, i.e., Seyfarth Shaw delivered it to me in plenty of time to read but he had other things he thought he has to do and just did not get to it before the deadline for filing?  (That certainly happens.  I still remember a run-in with inside counsel from 20+ years ago who never responded to drafts and refused to give instructions about what he wanted said at hearings, and then yelled at me when I tried to make things as simple as possible.  He was the guy in charge but seemed to think I should decide what his company would say to an order from the court to produce more documents.) Most who have worked in a law firm are familiar with the fire-drills that arise from someone being late on a draft or a client deciding to take a new direction at the last minute.  It does not sound like that was the case, or, more to the point, it was not the client who went a new direction.

Did no one at Seyfarth Shaw warn him about the provocative arguments they were making?  It is one thing to not advise the client in detail about an argument that the plaintiffs' don't have enough evidence for summary judgment, but something else ( think) not to advise the client to think about an argument that men and women soccer players are in different sports because the men face more people who say mean things about them -- at least when the issue of the case is whether the women are being paid comparably with the men.    

Did no one at Seyfarth Shaw discuss with USSF how the argument would appear in the press?  Did anyone at the firm even think about the question?

At the moment, it looks like the firm did a poor job.  Sometimes clients want idiotic arguments made.  Even so, the lawyers should advise the client about the risks of doing so. 

Sometimes none of the available arguments are likely to sell to the public.  Sometimes the lawyers are limited to arguments that, to be blunt, stink in public.  But it is still the job, and right for the lawyer, to make the arguments.  Maybe that is the case here -- I do not know much about employment law so I am not judging that.  And, I wonder how the oral argument will go.  Will the Latham lawyer adopt and defend the arguments of the brief, in total, or try to dump some off as mistakes of prior counsel. 

Dark Horseman

Yesterday Trump ordered an end to travel by EU citizens who have been in the Schengen area in the preceding 14 days.  Notable exclusions are UK and Ireland, and US citizens and permanent residents who are in Europe.  The last get to go home if they want.  Beyond the announcement, and the several post-announcement explanations -- certainly needed because Trump gave the impression of not having read his own order -- there is not much in the media about the reasoning behind the order.  There are lots of cases of Covid-19 in Europe, particularly Italy.  But there are over 1,000 cases in the US as well.  Free travel is still available in the US, which means that there is still that mode for spread of the virus.  As there is community transmission, travel is an issue.  The order looks a bit, a good bit, like a not helpful bit of "doing something".  The 'foreign virus' has a pretty good foothold in the US.  And how is a virus foreign?  When did they start getting nationalities?  Well, set aside the sarcasm.  What are the reasons for shutting down travel?  Is it really a useful move?  More, I wonder why no explanation has accompanied the order of how it will be a helpful thing to do.

The economic effects have become quite large.  The losses to retirement funds and savings are starting to look like something on the order of the 2008 collapse.  One hopes not.  But it is frightening as well.

 

Distance

The issues of (meaning about and related to) immigration and refugees continues, obviously, to bedevil the EU and USA, and Australia, and so on.  For many, the presence of immigrants and refugees calls for theories of moralitry and politics that extends protection to these groups.  Countries are not the sort of thing which can justifiably exclude newcomers as it chooses, but must find ways to accommodate and protect refugees.  The problems are pressing because the numbers are large.  An common idea is that the only status that really matters is that of being human beings.  It is not only cold or heartless, but immoral or evil not accommodate refugees in whatever numbers, to integrate into society.  Crooked Timber, for example, has posts along these lines with some regularity. It does not really matter where one is from, where born, etc., one's claims on a society, once one is present or sufficiently near, are the same for all within the circle, the physical circle. It is an arena in which the notions of right are to be grounded in being human.  The others, they do not matter as much or not much at all.

Distance is in a curious role in these lines of thought.  One the one hand, place is not important.  That this one has been in a place always gives no moral advantage over that one who has only just come seeking entry.  It is curious that the physical distance of various people governs the moral and political relations. Those near at hand, refugees, have greater call on concern and resources than those far away, those still in the place the others fled.  No claim that latter are better off than the former, or that the former are more virtuous than the latter.  Maybe more deserving, but it seems odd that desert would tie top the distance traveled.  Distance traveled hardly seems a morally compelling category.  But how else to distinguish the former from the latter?  On the other hand, social distance is to be ignored.  That those at hand, have limited social connection to those already present is wholly discounted.

Perhaps there is something to Hume's account.