RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2020/5/11/21254518/covid-19-pandemic-economy

“But when you ask questions from a different perspective, it becomes clear there is another side to the story. Sixty percent (60%) of voters believe every business that establishes safe social distancing protocols should be allowed to open. Every business! Not just a chosen few. Just 26% oppose the idea.”

One of the great joys of being a public opinion pollster comes when results to different questions seem to contradict each other. Some people — far too many in the political world — simply dismiss such apparent contradictions as evidence that people are either irrational or stupid. However, for those of us who trust the commonsense wisdom of everyday Americans, seemingly contradictory results provide an opportunity to better understand the public mood in a more nuanced manner.

I’ve seen many examples of this since first writing about how pollsters may be asking the wrong questions about the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, I noted that most Americans understand it’s not a question of stay home to stay safe or go out and get sick. Instead, most recognize that there are significant health risks involved in continuing the lockdowns. Since no options are completely safe, voters are weighing the difficult trade-offs based upon the underlying facts.

My polling this past weekend found that 23% of voters think government officials have gone too far in shutting things down. However, 71% believe those officials have either not gone far enough (35%) or have found the right balance (36%).

Most pollsters have found similar results. In most cases, the polls show slight growth in the number who think the government has gone too far, but that perspective still reflects a minority view. Using this as the only point of reference, one might conclude that voters remain committed to maintaining the lockdowns. Indeed, that’s the way much media coverage defines the public mood.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5

Have you been thinking lately that the more we learn about the Obama administration’s Russia hoax, the less sense it makes? For years now, the working hypothesis of conservative pundits has been that the narrative of Trump campaign collusion with Russia was a Deep State plot from the likes of Brennan/Comey/McCabe/Strzok to weaken and potentially remove Trump from office — a “soft coup,” if you will. That hypothesis was always hard to understand — why would such high ranking officials take big risks with such a transparently ridiculous narrative with little chance of succeeding? — and in my view has become even less consistent with what we know as more facts have recently come out.

So what was the Russia hoax really about? Here’s my alternative hypothesis. Its origin was entirely about giving Hillary an illicit assist in winning the 2016 election. Plenty of Democrat-partisan operatives in the intelligence community would be only too happy to use the government’s surveillance infrastructure to spy on the Trump campaign. As these operatives learned what Trump was up to, that information could be passed along to the Hillary campaign for strategic advantage. But the operatives needed a patina of legal authorization to point to in the off chance that the wrong side won, or there was a leak, and the spying got discovered. For that, the Hillary campaign and DNC ginned up the Trump/Russia dossier, to be used to open FBI investigations and/or get FISA warrants to authorize listening in on any member of the Trump campaign who had ever traveled to Russia or talked to a Russian, or maybe had used Russian dressing on a salad.

Note that my hypothesis implies something that we have as yet learned nothing about, namely: Somewhere, prior to the election, the fruits of the surveillance would have been systematically passed from the FBI, via some channels, on to the Clinton campaign. Likely these communications took place at the very highest levels. I would strongly suspect that Obama and Clinton were personally involved to at least some degree, although that was most likely not the exclusive channel of communication. Possibly the participants in these communications were careful enough to have made no written message, although that is quite difficult to accomplish in our current world. Even if all these communications took place by oral telephone calls between Obama and Clinton, I would suspect that the government has recordings of the calls somewhere in its vast intelligence archives. Anyway, if I were Barr and Durham, this is certainly what I would be looking for.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/12/trumps_methodical_destruction

We’ve all seen footage of those carefully timed explosions that bring down antiquated buildings and clear the ground for new ones. A horn sounds, the detonations begin, the building shakes, suspended for a frozen moment, and then collapses in a vast cloud of dust. That, metaphorically, is what is happening to the Obama administration’s legacy.

The presidential edifice has come down in two episodes, and the dust has not yet settled from either one. The first wrecked President Obama’s most consequential policies: the Affordable Care Act and the Iran nuclear deal. The second, happening now, is crushing its reputation for integrity, for following the most basic rules for conducting free and fair elections.

Consider Barack Obama’s biggest policy achievements. Trump campaigned on overturning both Obamacare and the Iran deal. And that’s what he’s done as president. For Democrats, these were bitter losses. Liberals and progressives alike were determined to defend them, even after losing the House and Senate in 2016. On those and other touchstone issues, such as immigration and judicial appointments, they were not looking for compromise solutions.

Neither was Donald Trump. As the new president, his most fundamental decision was to obliterate those Obama policies, not modify them at the margins. He wanted to erase the Affordable Care Act before it became an indelible feature of American life. Although the Republican Congress fell just short of repealing it and the Supreme Court didn’t do the job for them, Trump did manage to eliminate its essential funding mechanism (the “individual mandate”) and to lop off as much else as he could. (He and his party still haven’t figured out how to replace it. Obama’s lasting achievement is that even conservative Republicans realize they must do more than repeal it. They must deliver a replacement.)

Struggling hospitals and those hardest hit by COVID-19 should get more federal funding than nonprofit hospital systems with large endowments, patient safety advocates and other critics say.

An analysis for USA TODAY by OpenTheBooks.com shows the 20 nonprofit hospitals ranked by investments reported more than $116 billion in investments, including endowments. And although flush with money, critics say the tax-exempt systems also failed to adequately invest in basic emergency planning before the pandemic.

“Many large hospitals already have the ability to reprogram or redirect funds,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of Open the Books, a nonprofit transparency advocacy group. “They need to explain to patients and front-line health workers why they have or have not done so.” 

The first $30 billion in COVID-19 hospital assistance money was based on Medicare billings, so those 20 nonprofit systems ranked by Open the Books were among the hospitals receiving the biggest share.

The federal government’s decision this month to send $22 billion to rural hospitals and those hardest hit hardest by COVID-19 partially satisfied critics who charge Washington is rewarding wealthy tax-exempt hospitals that planned poorly for viral emergencies. But as nearly $50 billion more is about to be divvied up, advocates for struggling hospitals say help for well-endowed nonprofit hospital systems should be scrutinized. 

“The money going to hospitals is not free, it comes off the backs of American workers, over 10% of whom are unemployed,” says Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins University public health professor, patient safety advocate and author. “The hospitals who need it should be prioritized, not those with billion-dollar endowments and large cash reserves that provide little charity care. Not all hospitals function similarly.” 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/random-flynn-thoughts/

There is lots of Flynn chatter today. Three quick points:

1. As I explain in a piece at The Hill today, I understand why the Justice Department relied on a legal argument — viz., lack of materiality — for moving to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn. It spares DOJ the need to get into the facts of the case which, to put it mildly, are unflattering to the FBI and prosecutors. Nevertheless, the best reason to dismiss the Flynn case is that the government would not be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in court. The evidence is equivocal, the witnesses have profound credibility problems — and those witnesses actually thought Flynn was not lying to them.

The issue for the Justice Department is not whether Flynn made misstatements to Vice President Pence and other administration officials; it is whether prosecutors are in a position to carry their burden of proof that Flynn willfully lied to the interviewing agents. On the evidence as we understand it, I do not believe a jury would be confident even that they knew exactly what statements Flynn made, much less whether his statements were intentionally false rather than honest failures of recollection.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/05/12/report-anti-semitic-incidents-in-us-hit-record-high-in-2019/24281005/

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — American Jews were targets of more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than any other year over the past four decades, a surge marked by deadly attacks on a California synagogue, a Jewish grocery store in New Jersey and a rabbi’s New York home, the Anti-Defamation League reported Tuesday.

The Jewish civil rights group counted 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, finding 61 physical assault cases, 1,127 instances of harassment and 919 acts of vandalism. That’s the highest annual tally since the New York City-based group began tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979. It also marked a 12% increase over the 1,879 incidents it counted in 2018.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, attributes last year’s record high to a “normalization of anti-Semitic tropes,” the “charged politics of the day” and social media. This year, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic is fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

“Anti-Semitism is a virus. It is like a disease, and it persists,” Greenblatt said. “It’s sometimes known as the oldest hatred. It never seems to go away. There truly is no single antidote or cure.”

The ADL’s count of anti-Semitic assaults involved 95 victims. More than half of the assaults occurred in New York City, including 25 in Brooklyn. Eight of those Brooklyn assaults happened during a span of eight days in December, primarily in neighborhoods where many Orthodox Jews live.