The masks roll in, the masks roll out. In this tradeoff, America only comes out 279 million masks down. As Heather Cox Richardson points out in today’s Letter from an American, perhaps there is some reason for shipping 280 million masks overseas. But none has been forthcoming. We are left with the overwhelming impression of a government, stripped of experts and key operational elements, being led by amateurs and grifters like Jared Kushner (though he is not an amateur grifter. He is All-Pro).
Back at home Governor Charlie Baker and his team have pulled off a significant victory with the help of the private sector and especially, the Kraft family. Need it be said that if we had a functioning federal government, such heroics would never be necessary? The governor moved heaven and earth to get something that should have been flowing to Massachusetts (alas, a non-Trump state) as a matter of course. Full credit to Governor Baker.
(Btw, I happen to be reading some Lincoln and this one caught my eye, from his 1859 Letter to Pierce and the Boston Republicans: “This is a world of compensations.” Let’s all thank Bob Kraft, but recognize he is a billionaire businessman operating in Massachusetts. With a pending case in Florida where good deeds in a crisis can’t hurt. And the bosom buddy of one Donald Trump.)
Back in Massachusetts, I respect the Pioneer Institute’s capacity for political opportunism. They are doing very well. (If that sounds crass, it isn’t. Crisis accelerates politics). Yesterday Jim Stergios of Pioneer had an op-ed in the Boston Globe advocating for virtual learning and offering a Florida virtual school as an example. Among the backers of virtual schools is the Foundation for Excellence in Education founded by former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Betsy DeVos was on the board in 2014 and the Walton Family Foundation is among the funders. LEE is a non-profit member of the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council, which among other things has drafted model virtual school legislation. ALEC funders include foundations tied to the Koch network and the Bradley Foundation. The Waltons, Bradley Foundation, and David Koch have all funded Pioneer Institute. The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out.
Here is a study that should interest Massachusetts legislators, from my Economics colleagues Randy Albelda and Michael Carr and their student Brian Fitzpatrick, linked to in UMass Boston Study Confirms Benefits of Unions. “After a year of study, they found that union workers earned more than their non-union counterparts and were less likely to live in a low-income family. They were also more likely to have a work-based health insurance plan or retirement/pension plan and less likely to be enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP or to need public assistance. This reduces the financial burden on the Commonwealth, freeing up resources for other projects.”
A last important piece today is an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Monica Medina and Miro Korenha, The Environmental Upside of the Virus Shows the Green Way Ahead. It seems that as the world has slowed down our remarkably resilient environment is showing signs of bouncing back. Will we rebuild the world as it was and simply resume our path toward destroying the planet, or will we invest in new modes of energy, a cleaner economy, and green jobs? There are crucial policy decisions and political actors are working on them right now. Do we want Koch and the billionaire boys club to make those decisions, or can we take this opportunity to wrest politics away from a selfish oligarchy and make government work for us all?
Politics is the treatment, not the disease. But we have to make it work for us.
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]