The GOP Lacks a Long Game

I came across the image above in a print issue of The Week and thought that perfectly sums up the idiocy and lack of any kind of long game on the part of both the GOP and its propaganda arm, Fox News.  After spreading lies about Covid vaccines, encouraging anti-vaxers with ludicrous rants about Democrat/liberal assaults on "freedom" and promoting conspiracy theorists who say Covid is a hoax, a few in the GOP seem to have belatedly awakened to the reality that they are literally killing off members of their base.  Note the cartoon reference to "owning the libs."  For the adults dying due to their own stupidity and fealty to Der Trumpenfuhrer, it's hard to find much sympathy. I do worry immensely, however, about the children and youths caught up in families controlled by such adults - they should not suffer (and potentially died) because of the stupidity of their parents.

Vaccine Mandates Are Surging from the Ground Up

Even as politicians continue to display cowardice and gross lack of leadership in terms of imposing a Covid vaccine mandate in their jurisdictions (even though the legal authority to do so exists and has existed for over 100 years), many businesses are taking matters into their own hands and requiring both their employees and their customers to provide proof of vaccination in order to enter business premises.  Their goal is two fold: (i) protect employees from the irresponsible and self-centered, and (ii) avoid another forced shut-down that would inflict more financial harm.  Would that all businesses would take such action and bar the entry unvaccinated.  A piece in Newsweek looks at the growing trend.  Here are article highlights:

In San Francisco, the owners of nearly 300 bars now demand proof of vaccination before customers may enter. A growing number of Los Angeles restaurateurs require diners to prove they've been vaccinated or produce a recent negative test. Broadway patrons won't be seeing a New York show unless they've got proof of vaccination. Private businesses and hundreds of colleges are telling employees and students they can't show up if they haven't been jabbed.

The irony cannot be lost on governing bodies who still resist the idea of large-scale COVID-19 vaccine mandates: They're happening anyway. The mandates are simply occurring in a patchwork, haphazard sort of way, rather than following governmental top-down guidance.

Nationally, 58.2 percent of those over age 12 are fully vaccinated against COVID, although the surge of the Delta variant appears to have prompted an uptick in the numbers over the past week. For the population at large, the figure is 49.7 percent. (No vaccine is approved for those 12 and under.) Incentives ranging from cash to cannabis have largely failed to persuade the vaccine-hesitant to get a shot. And state and local governments have shied away from large scale requirements to get inoculated, even though the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their ability to enforce mandatory vaccinations more than 100 years ago.

Instead, the movement toward higher vaccination rates is happening from the ground up. In many cases, it starts with food and drink establishments that have everything to lose if runaway COVID rates once again force mass lockdowns on the public or on businesses like theirs.

"We haven't fought this hard, for this long, to let it go awry now," owners of the Los Angeles restaurant Osteria La Buca wrote in an Instagram post announcing that all guests at both of its locations show proof of vaccination beginning Aug. 2. "If you are not vaccinated, please do not argue. This policy will not be broken for anyone."

"It was done in order to keep our staff, our community, our musicians safe and hopefully to prevent another shutdown," said Jay Bordeleau, owner of an indoor-only jazz venue in San Francisco.

Having a higher authority make a policy of such requirements might provide businesses with some cover when dealing with unhappy customers, but that has proved elusive. A notable exception occurred Tuesday, when Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that New York will require vaccines of both workers and customers at indoor dining, gyms, performances and entertainment venues, making it the first U.S. city to do so.

Private businesses have the right—and the obligation—to keep their workplaces safe, legal experts say. As long as they make an allowance for someone who is medically unable to take a vaccine or has a specific religious objection, most employers can require that their workers become inoculated.

Masking remains a valuable tool to prevent the spread of COVID—"The data we have on masks is incredibly reassuring," Dr. Jeanne Noble, who directs COVID response at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, told Capital & Main. But the most effective deterrent to the spread of the virus is vaccination. That brings the conversation back to businesses and employers, even those at the federal level.

"The Justice Department has made it clear that it is legal to require COVID-19 vaccines," President Joe Biden said in announcing that all federal employees and contractors must be vaccinated or face workplace restrictions and weekly testing.

The three vaccines in the U.S. (Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson) are currently being administered under emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, as opposed to final approval. But experts say businesses, employers and state governments still generally have the authority to mandate them.

That's what is happening in California, as companies and storefronts come to the same conclusion: Staying open and productive is the only path forward. If it takes a hyperlocal vaccine requirement to make that happen, businesses are increasingly willing to consider it. And some larger corporations don't disagree: Both Google and Facebook said last week that all U.S. employees must be vaccinated before returning to those companies' offices, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai noting, "Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead."

It's also good business. After a year of often staggering financial loss, the arrival of the vaccines has coincided with a crying need for places to open again—and stay open. "Let's be clear here: We're doing this because we need to protect our staff and their families and our customers," Ben Bleiman, founder of the San Francisco Bar Owner Alliance, told the Washington Post. "We know how to control this virus."

Life needs to become very, very inconvenient for those who refuse to be vaccinated for no reason other than stupidity or GOP anti-vaccine lies.  

More Thursday Male Beauty

 

Do Not Fall for Glenn Youngkin's Claims of Business Acumen

Glenn Youngkin's political ads running in media markets across Virginia deliberately hide his far right extremism - his is the darling of The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group -  and stress his business success.  Yes, Youngkin made a lot of money at Carlyle Group, us a piece in Bloomberg.com lays out, a considerable amount of Youngkin's success came from being with the company at the right time and benefitting from its growth.  However, his leadership and investing acumen appear to have been something other that what Youngkin would have one believe.  Indeed, in one of the last big ventures Youngkin headed up before his retirement/being forced out saw a client lose 51% of its investment.  Virginian's cannot afford to allow Trump endorsed Youngkin to win in November and inflict such financial failure on the Commonwealth.  Don't fall for his propaganda.  Here are highlights from Bloomberg:

By Glenn Youngkin’s account, Virginia and its economy are “in the ditch.” So much so that he gave up his dream job atop Carlyle Group Inc. to get the state back on track.

The Republican nominee for governor is now ubiquitous on TV and the internet, driving home the opening pitch of his candidacy: “I’ve spent the last 30 years building business and creating jobs, leading a team of nearly 2,000 people who trusted me to get things done.”

Yet people close to the private-equity firm have been chafing over the picture Youngkin paints of his investing acumen and the circumstances of his departure. In his final decade there, he shepherded several bets and strategies that chalked up losses, and some of them are still being unwound.

After Carlyle’s founders gave him a shot at co-running the firm in 2018, he flamed out. In an industry where leadership teams work together for decades, his co-CEO quickly established dominance, diminishing Youngkin’s clout.

Youngkin, 54, exited Carlyle in September and quickly became a name in conservative politics, railing against abortion and critical race theory, and vowing to stand up for the Second Amendment and election security. His take on Virginia’s economy is dire, faulting Democrats for raising taxes and overzealously restricting commerce to fight Covid-19.

But at Carlyle the circumstances of his exit aren’t really a secret: He retired after a power struggle that left him in charge of more modest businesses. Current and former employees, asking not to be identified discussing internal business, describe a checkered record at odds with his campaign’s portrayal.

Former colleagues have been bracing for his run to not only spotlight Carlyle’s past controversies -- akin to what Mitt Romney’s presidential run did to Bain Capital -- but for it to also dredge up missteps by Youngkin and managers he oversaw.

Democrats have sought to use Youngkin’s tenure at Carlyle against him, assailing businesses practices such as its willingness to invest in China, to make the case that his campaign rhetoric doesn’t reflect his past. He has tried to minimize the scale of those dealings. Recently, McAuliffe focused on tying Youngkin to former President Donald Trump, who lost the state by 10 points in 2020.

Trump endorsed Youngkin last month in a news release: “Glenn has been an incredible success and will truly make Virginia great again.”

Carlyle’s founders, meanwhile, were having trouble finding a new leadership team to take over as they stepped back. A number of potential candidates -- such as prominent JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive Michael Cavanagh -- came and went.

Youngkin figured into the discussions: He’d grown up inside the firm, helped it expand to Europe and was uniquely steeped in Carlyle’s operations and culture. Yet the founders recognized they needed someone with strong investing chops who could ensure big returns.

They ultimately paired him with Kewsong Lee, a sharp-elbowed and decisive dealmaker who quickly became more dominant. He took control of the firm’s most prominent businesses, including private equity and credit investments. Youngkin was left with smaller lines, such as European real estate. A number of groups under him struggled, and some longtime employees who ran them left to pursue other opportunities.

During his time at the top, he helped convert Carlyle’s legal structure to a corporation -- a move designed to allow more investors, such as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, in the stock.

But the infrastructure push haunted him. The fund that Carlyle raised in 2018 struggled to move large deals forward, such as the redevelopment of Terminal One at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. According to Carlyle, the fund had invested just $466 million as of last December, when a new head was brought in.

One customer, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, said it was told the fund had a negative return of 51% at the end of 2020.

That year, Youngkin confided in colleagues that he felt he had little choice but to leave as co-CEO Lee continued to strengthen his grip. When announcing his departure, he told employees that he wasn’t sure what he would do next.

By the time he stepped down Sept. 30, Carlyle’s stock had posted an 8% gain during his time at the top. Apollo had advanced 34% in the period, and Blackstone and KKR & Co. were up 63%.

This reality does not jibe with the the picture Youngkin's ads are falsely painting. In fact, it is reminiscent of Trump's false picture of his business acumen.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

 

Youngkin Breathes New Life Into Trump's Big Lie

From time to time I visit the conservative website "Bearing Drift" - which calls itself "Virginia's conservative voice" - to see if there are any sane conservatives/Republicans left in Virginia.  Thankfully, insanity and delusion has not overtaken all conservatives in the Commonwealth and better yet, some remain willing to call out those who peddle lies and suffer from either delusions or a toxic cynicism that justifies any lie if it will further their personal agenda/fortunes. A continuing target of such denunciations is GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Younkin who continues to prostitute himself to Trump cultists and promote the "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Sadly, a tawdry whore has more moral standing than Younkin who is seemingly ready to end democracy in Virginia and the nation.  A piece in Bearing Drift rips into Youngkin.  Here are excerpts:

Glenn Youngkin’s blank-slate strategy to win Virginia’s gubernatorial election ran aground again in Fredericksburg as he couldn’t bring himself to refute the Big Lie – even entertaining the possibility that Donald Trump could still reverse last year’s election.

Youngkin – who refused to acknowledge Biden “was legitimately elected’ until after he’d sewn up the GOP nomination, then pretended he’d said it all along – went back to the base-feeding status quo ante. As reported by HuffPo…

“I don’t know the particulars about how that can happen, because what’s happening in the court system is moving slowly and it’s unclear. And we all know the courts move slowly,” Youngkin said, in response to a question about whether Trump’s reinstatement could help Virginia Republicans claim seats they lost in elections the voter claimed had also been stolen.

In other words, Youngkin is hoping that Republicans don’t remember him acknowledging Biden’s win – and that everyone else in Virginia isn’t paying attention to him disavowing said acknowledgement. It says something about the state of the GOP in Virginia that the closest thing they can think to offer to swing voters is a candidate who tries to come off as only half delusional.

But the delusion is too dangerous for Virginians to empower anyone even with just a partial commitment to the crazy.

Should he manage to win this fall, Governor Part-Time QAnon would take control of every election board in the Commonwealth, while he promises unnamed “reforms” – presumably starting with an Arizona-style fiasco.

It hasn’t been a great summer for the Republican nominee. This won’t make it better.

In the meantime, Virginia voters have once again been shown that democracy itself is on the ballot. Terry McAuliffe, for all his many faults, is at least willing to preserve it.

Youngkin? It’s unclear.

More Wednesday Male Beauty

 

We Need a No-Fly List for the Unvaccinated

Many of us hoped we would be nearing full normalcy in our lives at this point in 2021, yet sadly, many venues and businesses are moving back toward mask requirements and other lock down like measures (I am now regularly wearing a mask again when conducting real estate closings since I have no assurance that unvaccinated individuals are not exposing me to the possibility of a so-called break through infection).  Why?  Because stupid and or self-centered individuals (many Trump cultist Republicans) have failed and refused to get vaccinated.  It is clearly time to start making life increasing unpleasant for those who refuse to get vaccinated and endanger others and threaten to push the nation back into a lock down.  A piece in The Atlantic lays out the case for banning the unvaccinated from flying on domestic flights.  Being unvaccinated needs to increasingly make one a social pariah and have serious consequences in terms of depriving the stupid and selfish from access to day to day activities.  Here are article highlights:

When you go to the airport, you see two kinds of security rules. Some apply equally to everyone; no one can carry weapons through the TSA checkpoint. But other protocols divide passengers into categories according to how much of a threat the government thinks they pose. If you submit to heightened scrutiny in advance, TSA PreCheck lets you go through security without taking off your shoes; a no-fly list keeps certain people off the plane entirely. Not everyone poses an equal threat. Rifling through the bags of every business traveler and patting down every preschooler and octogenarian would waste the TSA’s time and needlessly burden many passengers.

The same principle applies to limiting the spread of the coronavirus. The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available, at least to adults.  . . . . at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.

[A] no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take. It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel—and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.

Flying is not a right, and the case for restricting it to vaccinated people is straightforward: The federal government is the sole entity that can regulate the terms and conditions of airline safety. And although air-filtration systems and mask requirements make transmission of the coronavirus unlikely during any given passenger flight, infected people can spread it when they leave the airport and take off their mask. The whole point of international-travel bans is to curb infections in the destination country; to protect itself, the United States still has many such restrictions in place. Beyond limiting the virus’s flow from hot spots to the rest of the country, allowing only vaccinated people on domestic flights will change minds, too.

Polls suggest that vaccine holdouts have a variety of motivations: . . . . 41 percent said that a prohibition on airline travel would get them closer to their shots. Tellingly, 11 percent of those adamantly opposed to vaccination would also be motivated by a travel ban . . . . More than another recitation of statistics about vaccines’ benefits or yet another appeal to the common good, the deprivation of movement will win over doubters. Some unvaccinated Americans in areas where vaccination seekers face scorn among their peer group may even be happy to have an excuse to protect themselves.

The public debate about making vaccination a precondition for travel, employment, and other activities has described this approach as vaccine mandates, a term that, to conservative critics, suggests that unvaccinated people are being ordered around arbitrarily. What is actually going on, mostly, is that institutions are shifting burdens to unvaccinated people—denying them access to certain spaces, requiring them to take regular COVID-19 tests, charging them for the cost of that testing—rather than imposing greater burdens on everyone. Americans still have a choice to go unvaccinated, but that means giving up on certain societal benefits.

Nobody has a constitutional right to attend The Lion King on Broadway or work at Disney or Walmart. Employers and entertainment venues are realizing that they can operate more easily without the hassle of planning around unvaccinated employees and customers. Amid a global health crisis, people who defy public-health guidance are not, and do not deserve to be, a protected class.

For the privilege of flying, Americans already give up a lot: We disclose our personal information, toss our water bottles, extinguish our cigarette butts, and lock our guns in checked luggage. For vaccinated people, having to show proof of vaccination when flying would be a minor inconvenience.

The Biden administration could give unvaccinated Americans a brief window in which to get shots. A travel rule that took effect by October would cover those who hope to visit relatives during the holiday season. Vaccine verification and legitimate exceptions for age or preexisting health conditions can be part of airline databases, as are other security features. The current reliance on paper vaccination cards makes for a clumsy system, but better public- and private-sector systems are likely to emerge if employers, entertainment venues, and the TSA all seek to verify individuals’ status. Some people may try to lie and cheat their way around a TSA requirement, but violating federal aviation-safety measures is generally a crime.

By requiring proof of vaccination for flights, the U.S. government will better protect society and get out of the business of helping the coronavirus proliferate in another place. People who still want to wait and see about the vaccines can continue doing so. They just can’t keep pushing all the costs on everyone else.

This needs to happen!

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Make Vaccine Refusers Pay More for Insurance

As noted in numerous posts, I have zero sympathy for Covid vaccine refusers save those with legitimate and documented medical conditions that make vaccination dangerous.  There should be no exemptions from vaccination based on political or religious beliefs and I fully support employers making vaccination a requirement for continued employment,  Any employee who fails to get vaccinated (except those with legitimate medical excuses) should be terminated for cause and barred from receiving unemployment benefits.  A national pandemic requires forceful action and those who endanger others should be barred from restaurants, public buildings, and public accommodations if they cannot produce proof of vaccination.  Now, health insurance carriers may be about to make vaccine refusal even more costly: make vaccine refusers pay more - ideally significantly more - for health insurance coverage or, better yet, deny them coverage completely (non-profit hospitals should also be allowed to turn them away).  There needs to be a real and significant cost imposed on those who deliberately endanger others and put the nation's economy at risk. A column in the New York Times looks at what would be welcomed insurance carrier action.  Here are excerpts:

America’s Covid-19 vaccination rate is about 60 percent, for ages 12 and up. That’s not enough to reach so-called herd immunity, and in states like Missouri — where a number of counties have vaccination rates under 25 percent — hospitals are overwhelmed by serious outbreaks of the more contagious Delta variant.

The vaccine resisters offer all kinds of reasons for refusing the free shots and for ignoring efforts to nudge them to get vaccinated. Campaigns urging Americans to get vaccinated for their health, for their grandparents, for their neighbors, to get free doughnuts or a free joint haven’t done the trick.

[T]here are still huge numbers of unvaccinated people. Federal, state and municipal governments, as well as private businesses, continue to largely avoid mandates for their employees out of fears they will provoke a backlash.

So how about an economic argument? Get a Covid-19 shot to protect your wallet. Getting hospitalized with Covid-19 in the United States typically generates huge bills. . . . a more than $1,000 out-of-pocket bill for a deductible — plus more for copays and possibly some out-of-network care — should be a pretty scary incentive.

In 2020, before there were Covid-19 vaccines, most major private insurers waived patient payments — from coinsurance to deductibles — for Covid treatment. But many, if not most, have allowed that policy to lapse. . . . . More than 97 percent of hospitalized patients last month were unvaccinated. Though the vaccines will not necessarily prevent you from catching the coronavirus, they are highly effective at ensuring you will have a milder case and are kept out of the hospital.

For this reason, there’s logic behind insurers’ waiver rollback: Why should patients be kept financially unharmed from what is now a preventable hospitalization, thanks to a vaccine that the government paid for and made available for free?

The Affordable Care Act allows insurers to charge smokers up to 50 percent more than what nonsmokers pay for some types of health plans. Four-fifths of states follow that protocol . . . . In 49 states, people who are caught driving without auto insurance face fines, confiscation of their car, loss of their license and even jail. And reckless drivers pay more for insurance.

The logic behind the policies is that the offenders’ behavior can hurt others and costs society a lot of money. If people decide not to get vaccinated and contract bad cases of Covid, they are not only exposing others in their workplace or neighborhoods; the tens or hundreds of thousands spent on their care could mean higher premiums for others as well in their insurance plans next year.

Many holdouts say they will be vaccinated only if required to do so by their employers. . . . But what if the financial cost of not getting vaccinated were just too high? If patients thought about the price they might need to pay for their own care, maybe they would reconsider remaining unprotected.