Im-Politic: Selective CCP Virus Finger-Pointing

Tags

Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Dan Diamond, Daniel Lippman, Defense Production Act, DPA, George W. Bush, health security, healthcare goods, Im-Politic, Jessica Silverman-Greenberg, Mainstream Media, MSM, Nahal Toosi, National Security Council, Nicholas Kulish, pandemic, regulations, Sarah Kliff, The New York Times, Trump, ventilators, Wuhan virus

Mainstream Media accounts of the Trump administration’s CCP Virus response keep appearing emphasizing how lousy and lackadaisical it’s been compared with the federal response to potentially dangerous disease outbreaks during the Obama years – and especially given supposedly prescient pandemic warnings that the Obama-nauts sounded to their successors that allegedly were ignored.

So RealityChek is going to have to keep pointing out major flaws in these accounts that both reporters and their editors should have noted, and questions they should have asked.

Keep in mind, moreover, that today’s pushback comes on top of (1) this blog’s description of a 2011 Commerce Department report on America’s increasingly dangerous vulnerability to foreign cutoffs of vital healthcare goods that was completely ignored; and (2) a similar presentation of federal economic data making clear the nation’s healthcare security – another way to think of this vulnerability – has been weakening for at least two decades.

Let’s start with the article in today’s New York Times detailing how a George W. Bush administration plan continued under Barack Obama failed to plug what its public health officials viewed as “one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.” The effort entailed finding businesses willing to try to build ventilators that were cheaper, more portable, and easier to use than were then available, and then awarding the contract to the best proposal.

According to Times reporters Nicholas Kulish, Sarah Kliff, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg (and presumably their editors), the eventual failure mainly highlighted “the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.”

And although this point wasn’t made, the obvious message that the piece meant to send readers is that the President continues making a big mistake by not unleashing the full power of the Defense Production Act (DPA)– which creates vast government power to order whatever companies it wishes to make whatever products it considers necessary as quickly as possible, and to prioritize sales to Washington, not other customers. Underlying this position, of course, is the (completely ignorant) belief that this 1950 law (amended several times since) enables a Chief Executive to snap his fingers and instantly start assembly lines churning out ventilators and face masks and pharmaceuticals, etc.

But let’s leave aside this DPA fetishism. As I tweeted, the following sentence in the piece isn’t completely uninteresting given the unmistakable importance of quick results: After an initial failure (that shouldn’t be pinned on either of those two administrations), “The federal government started over with another company in 2014, whose ventilator was approved only last year and whose products have not yet been delivered.”

That doesn’t sound like the regulatory process reflected particular urgency – and clearly the problem extended into the Trump administration. But this business-as-usual attitude reigned even though, as the article noted, the ventilator project “came in the wake of a parade of near-miss pandemics: SARS, MERS, bird flu and swine flu.” In other words, evidence abounded that pandemics weren’t a rarity. Recently, they were becoming frequent. And still apparently no thought was given to any regulatory fast-tracking.

Finally in connection with this episode. It’s commendable that these pre-Trump public health officials tried to do something new. Less commendable, and less understandable, is why none of them recognized the foreign vulnerability problem and the offshoring-happy trade policies that fostered them.

Two other recent articles seeking to pin the blame for U.S. CCP Virus unpreparedness on Mr. Trump came out March 16 and March 25 in Politico. The first documented that on January 13, 2017 – seven days before the Trump inauguration – a team of outgoing Obama administration officials held a briefing for a team of incoming Trump-ers “intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis” – the distinct possibility that a major, deadly pandemic would sweep over the United States from abroad.

Further, the briefers specified that the new administration “could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was ‘paramount’….” Unfortunately, continued the article by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, the Trumpers seemed pretty apathetic. And that’s pretty damning, right?

In principle, yes. But why did the Politico staff bury this observation: “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today”? Because it would take much of the punch out of this supposed bombshell?

Also buried: An observation in the apparently actual briefing document that, when in terms of “U.S. hospital preparedness and response,” “State and local governments lead public health response.” That’s an important piece of the current American response – even though it’s been relentlessly portrayed in the press another example of the administration’s failure. And P.S. – this document said nothing about ensuring adequate national screening capability.

Politico wasn’t finished, however. Nine days later, it ran another piece – by two of the same reporters – charging that the Trump administration’s CCP Virus policies have “failed to follow” a detailed pandemic playbook prepared by the Obama National Security Council that, it seems, would have prevented much of the virus damage inflicted on the nation.

Again, it’s a plausible claim – although, like the first Politico piece, this article left out the development of the Trump administration’s own pandemic strategy by the fall of 2018 (which means that work on it throughout the federal government began months before).

Also, like the first article, it failed to pose these crucial questions: If the Obama pandemic specialists were so utterly convinced that a pandemic would strike sooner rather than later, and that Team Trump was falling down on the preparation job, why didn’t they alert Democrats in Congress, or Never Trumper Republicans? Certainly there’s been no shortage of lawmakers (especially Democrats) looking for any opportunity to slam the administration (especially if this activity could do some good).

Additionally, if these pandemic warriors did send their message to these lawmakers, why did the public hear so little about it?

My hunch: For three years, the Never Trumpers of both parties had much higher priorities. Think “Russia” and “impeachment.”

Im-Politic: The Latest Trump CCP Virus Fake News

Tags

Beth Cameron, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, ebola, Im-Politic, National Security Council, NSC, Obama administration, pandemic, Politico, Tim Morrison, TIME, Trump, Washington Post, WHO, World Health Organization, Wuhan virus

I’m getting sick and tired of debunking Mainstream Media myths spread about the Trump administration’s failures in dealing with the CCP Virus (as I have now taken to calling it, in honor of the Chinese Communist Party regime’s role in covering it up and thereby preventing timely responses all over the world). And maybe you’re getting sick and tired of reading them.

All the same, the attacks keep coming, and three in particular that have appeared in the last week – which happen to be closely related to each other – are screaming out for pushback.

Off the bat, though, some essential context: As I’ve tweeted repeatedly, I agree that the President’s anti-Wuhan Virus (another monicker I’ve been using) policy has been flawed. Chiefly, Mr. Trump does deserve criticism for claiming until recently that everything’s under control – although I can’t help but continuing to note that the World Health Organization (WHO) didn’t declare the situation to be a global pandemic until March 11. That’s a grand total of nine days ago.

In addition, testing of course took off way too slowly. I strongly suspect that this stemmed from outmoded guidelines and manufacturing processes at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that predated the Trump inauguration. But the buck in the U.S. government ultimately and rightly stops on the President’s desk, and a Chief Executive who’s described himself as a Can-do-type disrupter should have stopped the agency’s business-as-usual approach faster.

As for the broadsides with much less, if any, merit? The first concerns the claim that the administration foolishly abolished the National Security Council (NSC) office that it inherited from the Obama administration that focused on protecting the country from pandemics. This allegation, first made by that office’s first director, has been (to put it charitably) exposed as misleading by one of her NSC successors, Tim Morrison.

He’s explained that the office’s responsibilities were merged into a new office that looked at pandemics more holistically, because they’re closely related to challenges like those posed by weapons of mass destruction generally. And Morrison has contended – credibly – that thanks to various preparations made by this reorganized NSC, an Ebola outbreak was quashed quickly.

To be sure, as I’ve pointed out, the emergence of diseases in regions like Central Africa, which have scant connections with the global economy, and in places like China, which have extensive connections, pose dramatically different challenges. And I continue to think, as argued, that bureaucratic reforms involving such tiny government agencies are game-changers in real-world terms. But you’d think that the initial accuser, Beth Cameron, might consider apologizing. And that the Washington Post would acknowledge a huge fact-checking failure (though it did run the rejoinder).

What’s even less well known – and has gone even more scantily reported than the Morrison observations – is that Mr. Trump’s predecessors approved decisions that actually do look like genuine pandemic defense downgrades. According to this TIME magazine post:

“The Trump Administration has become the third White House in a row to downgrade or eliminate the senior White House personnel tasked with tracking disease and bioterrorism threats, according to Kenneth Bernard, a retired Rear Admiral and physician, who served as a special assistant to the president for security and health during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.”

TIME continues:

Bernard “served in the top role in the Clinton National Security Council, only to be ignored by the incoming George W. Bush Administration, which eliminated his special advisor position.

“But after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington spurred fears Al-Qaeda would follow up with a bioweapons attack, and the anthrax attacks of 2001, the Bush Administration re-established the office, bringing Bernard back to serve as the first former Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense, as a subset of the White House’s Homeland Security Council (HSC), which later helped combat outbreaks of SARS and the Avian Influenza.”

And as for the Obama record:

“Under Obama’s NSC, Bernard says the office was downgraded again, until the 2014 Ebola crisis emerged, and President Barack Obama appointed ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain. National Security Advisor Susan Rice later institutionalized the office in 2015, calling it the Directorate for Global Health and Security and Biodefense.”

Not exactly a model of foresight.

The next two myths were propagated (and weirdly invalidated at the same time) by this supposed Politico scoop about a transition-period Obama administration warning to the incoming Trump administration to ramp up for an inevitable big-time pandemic. The thrust of the article, written by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, is that outgoing Obama officials held a briefing with soon-to-be Trump counterparts on the potential dangers of the kind of bio-threat being faced by the nation right now, and that the Trump-ers were decidedly uninterested.

The allegedly clear implication, as the article quoted former national security advisor Susan E. Rice as recently writing: “Rather than heed the warnings, embrace the planning and preserve the structures and budgets that had been bequeathed to him, the president ignored the risk of a pandemic.”

As noted above, the structures and budgets point is bogus. But so is the warnings point. And we know this in part because, as Politico stated (in paragraph 18), “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today.”

Also important to note: The authors presented documents presented at the meeting, and they make clear the phoniness of both the charge that Trump officials were (uniquely) caught flat-footed by CCP Virus testing requirements, and that the leadership vacuum they’ve created has given the states no choice but to fill a gap that’s not their responsibility.

Except the documents say absolutely nothing about boosting testing capabilities or modifying CDC guidelines. And they specify that “State and local governments lead public health response,” especially when it comes to “hospital preparedness and response.”

Recent news reports have created some optimism that effective anti-CCP Virus medicines may be developed sooner than initially expected.  Too bad there’s no reason to think that another serious malady – Trump Derangement Syndrome – will soon come under control.

Im-Politic: In Case You Still Doubt It’s a China Virus

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China, China virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, decoupling, elites, globlalism, Hong Kong, Im-Politic, Iran, Italy, pandemics, Taiwan, The Epoch Times, Trump

Yesterday’s RealityChek post explained why Americans looking for current domestic scapegoats for the sluggish China Virus outbreak response are barking up the wrong tree. But despite the predictable criticisms from globalism- and political correctness-happy elites and the Mainstream Media journalists who follow their cues, the search for foreign scapegoats is absolutely legitimate – primarily because one country above all has unmistakably earned the title: China.

Skeptical? Then check out this editorial from The Epoch Times. As it compellingly demonstrates, “Where Ties With Communist China Are Close, the Coronavirus Follows.”

More specifically, although the editorial writers note that numerous drivers lie behind COVID19’s spread, “the heaviest-hit regions outside China all share a common thread: close or lucrative relations with the communist regime in Beijing.”

One reason I found the editorial especially important was its explanation for the virus’ concentration in Italy. Some convincing explanations for high levels of Italian mortality rates have come out, but I’ve yet to run across any material on why China Virus became so common in Italy to begin with. The Epoch Times spotlights some major reasons:

“Italy, the most heavily affected country outside China as of March 10, was the first (and only) G-7 [“Group of 7” – an official organization of the world’s seven biggest economies] nation to sign onto the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road). In an attempt to prop up its weakening economy, Italy has also sought to capture the Chinese market for selling its luxury goods….

“Italy also has signed scores of sister-city agreements with China, with the cities of Milan, Venice, and Bergamo included among them. These are the areas hardest-hit by the virus.”

China ties also seem largely responsible for the coronavirus’ outsize impact on Iran:

“The Iranian regime has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016, and its ties with Beijing began years before that. In violation of international sanctions, Iran has imported embargoed materials from China, while continuing to sell oil to the PRC. The Islamic Republic allowed flights in and out of four major Chinese cities until the end of February.”

And reinforcing the case for a vital Iran-China connection is this Wall Street Journal piece. It reports that the Iranian city of Qom, which Iran’s government calls the country’s COVID19 starting point, has been the site of numerous infrastructure projects built by Chinese engineers and technicians as part of that Belt and Road program.

As the Times notes, even South Korea’s government – whose comprehensive and seemingly testing program has garnered widespread global praise – seems to have set itself up for China Virus troubles “for refusing to ban Chinese tourists at large and instead only barring entry for those who recently traveled to Hubei Province, the epicenter of the epidemic in China.”

Don’t forget, moreover, that one big reason surely has concerned South Korea’s long surging economic relations with China – which assembles lots of high-value manufactured goods containing numerous South Korean parts and components. The same goes for Japan, another coronavirus hotspot.

The Epoch Times‘ conclusion is also borne out by the experiences of two other places with extensive economic relations with China that seem to have the disease contained: Hong Kong and Taiwan. (And I don’t mean to suggest that the latter isn’t a “country.”)

The city, located right next to another China Virus epicenter, Guangdong Province, has basically shut its border with the People’s Republic. Taiwan “began to board planes and assess passengers on Dec. 31, 2019, after Wuhan authorities first confirmed the outbreak. In early February, Taiwan banned entry to foreign nationals who have traveled to the PRC.”

Of course, now that the virus has spread far beyond China, government authorities need to focus on more domestically focused strategies – although plugging remaining foreign travel gaps, as President Trump approved in his otherwise unsuccessful Wednesday night Oval Office address, can certainly be justified in many circumstances.

Moreover, China’s primo role in not only the coronavirus outbreak but the previous Bird Flu and ongoing Asian Swine Flu episodes indicates that there’s something about China that makes it particularly (if not uniquely) plague-prone. As a result, further curbs on commerce with the PRC seem imperative even leaving aside (as no one should) Beijing’s recent threat to cut off shipments of vital medicines and their chemical ingredients to the United States. In other words, keeping the focus on China’s responsibility will help American leaders keep and intensify their focus on desirable, broader economic decoupling.

And China’s disgraceful effort to place blame for the virus on the United States amounts to a major additional reason to spotlight the above transnational coronavirus links.

“Blame games” in politics and policy are often condemned, and surely they’re often wrongheaded or overdone. But they also serve the valuable purpose of clarifying thought, accurately identifying problems, and – as suggested above – speeding the discovery of effective solutions. That’s why The Epoch Times editorial gives me more reason than ever to keep calling the coronavirus the China Virus – and why the same should go for all Americans.    

Im-Politic: No U.S. Politicians Own China Virus Bragging Rights (& That’s Not a Scandal)

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Biden, budgets, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, China virus, coronavirus, Democrats, election 2020, health security, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, public health, Trump

Since the coronavirus’ serious threat to Americans’ health and their economy became clear, a blizzard of charges has accused President Trump of being caught flat-footed by the pandemic. I agree that the President didn’t expect a dangerous plague to break out overseas and swiftly cross America’s borders. I’ve also written that Mr. Trump made a big mistake in cutting funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – but mainly for political reasons. For the amounts of money involved are so small that they couldn’t possibly even move the needle in terms of reining in federal spending and cutting deficits.

In fact, given the tiny sums, the picture looks pretty good when it comes to the latest Trump budget request for the CDC programs that actually deal with coronavirus-type threats. Check out the line items for “Emerging Infectious Diseases” and “Global Disease Detection and Other Programs.” The former is down only marginally from actual spending levels previously agreed to by Congress (including of course its Democrats) and the latter is up significantly.

But more important, the allegations seem to assume that the American political system has been chock full of leaders who can boast the foresight the President lacked, and that the nation’s response would have been much more effective had one of them occupied the Oval Office. Is there any actual evidence for this proposition?

One crucial test is whether well before the virus became front-page news any of the leading recent and current Democratic candidates for President rolled out plans for beefing up American capabilities to respond to pandemics before the virus’ breakout in China. And do you know how many did? None – with the possible exception of former New York City Mayor and media magnate Michael Bloomberg.

That’s based on checking the polcy sections of the websites of former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and drop-out Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Drop-outs Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg have taken all the content down from their sites.  But a wide-ranging media survey of their positions reveals no attention paid to pandemics, either.

I describe drop-out Bloomberg as a possible exception because his site did Mr. Trump’s “erratic leadership, go-it-alone approach, and distrust of science” for putting the country “in a vulnerable position should a major public health emergency, such as the novel coronavirus…materialize.” And he outlined what can fairly be called a plan.

Yet it’s not clear when these Bloomberg proposals were unveiled, and there’s no evidence that he was thinking about such matters before COVID 19’s appearance.

The same goes for Warren and Klobuchar, whose plans only dated from late January. Biden published an op-ed detailing his own ideas at about the same time. (See this post for links.)

I don’t believe that any of these politicians (including those with long years of public service) deserve any blame for failing to anticipate the virus threat on a timely basis – and for the same fundamental reason I don’t believe Mr. Trump should be pilloried. Because this kind of pandemic (coming from a country with extensive ties with the U.S. and global economies, like China, as opposed to regions like Central and West Africa, with almost no such ties) really couldn’t be anticipated adequately.

And incidentally, this point is also relevant to the charge made by Biden and others that the President not only cut the budget for the CDC, but for the country’s foreign aid agency, and also dismantled the White House global health security team created during the Obama years.

But anyone honestly believing that a little office somewhere in the Executive Office of the President would have made a meaningful difference in preventing or fighting the virus is guilty of drinking the policy wonk kool-aid claiming that augmenting bureaucratic flow-charts in any way amounts to solving problems – even those that emerge suddenly. As for the foreign aid cuts, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been working on helping prevent the spread of infectious diseases like the coronavirus, but Beijing made clear early on that American government help wasn’t wanted. (Nor was World Health Organization help.)

In other words, life is full of unpleasant surprises and shocks, and from time to time they’re big. Human beings don’t come with perfectly functioning crystal balls in their heads, and learning curves are rarely as steep as we’d like because lessons from experience and history tend to be excruciatingly difficult to draw. Hindsight can be superb, but says nothing about clairvoyance. Governments, moreover, although indispensable in such situations, are often not the most efficient actors, and in crises, they’re often forced to scramble.

That’s not to say that the President may not pay a political price for his coronavirus record, or that Americans don’t have a right to be frustrated with his actions to date, much less that he deserves reelection on any grounds. Indeed,  here’s a great suggestion for the kind of speech Mr. Trump should have made by now, and still should make – which urges him to use the virus crisis as an opportunity both to stimulate the economy and prepare better for future pandemics with major spending and other measures to bolster national health security.

But it is is to warn that none of President Trump’s critics or challengers can legitimately claim to have done better, let alone that they’ll act more effectively when the next black swan – biological or not -flies into our lives.

Im-Politic: I Stutter and I Know That’s Not Biden’s Only Gaffe Problem

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Biden, campaigns, cognitive decline, election 2020, Hollins Communications Research Institute, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Ronald A. Webster, stuttering

Here at RealityChek I’ve avoided writing about myself for three main reasons. First, I can’t imagine that my life and experiences are remotely as interesting to others as they are to me. Second, they’re almost never relevant to the public policy issues on which I’d rather focus. And third, when they are, viewing them through a personal lens unavoidably entails using firsthand anecdotes to make a case – which holds no analytical water whatever.

Yet over the last few months, and especially over the last few days, it seems, the personal and political have intersected in a way that I believe does enable me to make a valid point about a headline issue. That’s the matter of whether Joe Biden’s verbal gaffes indicate “cognitive decline,” or whether they simply show that he’s dealing with a lifelong stutter.

The difference of course matters greatly. After all, if the former is the case, then it’s legitimate to wonder whether the 77-year old former Vice President and frontrunner for this year’s Democratic presidential nomination can hold up under the rigors of a general election campaign and, more important, the pressures of the world’s most important job. If the latter, then there’s no reason to suppose that Biden isn’t up to the task mentally. For there’s absolutely no intrinsic relationship between stuttering and intelligence or mental health.

To the former Vice President and long-time Senator’s credit, he’s never tried to excuse these episodes – or any from years past – as a speech impediment. But some of his supporters (or at least opponents of President Trump) have.

My take? Biden’s control over his stutter has faltered from time to time, and explains some of his stumbles and other unusual speech patterns. But many of the instances that have generated concern have nothing to do with a pure speech disorder. Indeed, they at least appear to represent moments of genuine confusion and/or memory lapses often characteristic of advanced age.

And here’s where the personal comes in: My confidence in the above conclusions reflects my own experience as a lifelong stutterer. Not that I’m an accredited expert in speech pathology or gerontology or any aspect of brain science. But I am (way too) intimately familiar with an inability to voice the words I want to say, and with the various tactics stutterers use to try to make their thoughts heard.

Moreover, because I’ve been lucky enough to have received treatment from an outstanding stuttering therapy program developed and run for decades by Ph.D. speech pathologist Ronald A. Webster, I’ve made long-time friendships with literally dozens of fellow stutterers and become acquainted to varying degrees with literally hundreds more. By sharing experiences with them and observing them deal with their own stutters first-hand, like many other stutterers, I’ve learned to identify whether someone is simply encountering the kind of speech disfluency that everyone faces every now and then, and whether they’re dealing with a genuine stuttering problem.

In addition, thanks to listening to many hours of Webster classroom talks and more hours of personal discussions, I’ve learned that the best research in the field (essentially Webster’s own) makes clear that stuttering ultimately represents malfunctions in an individual’s anatomical speech mechanism (consisting mainly of the lips, tongue, vocal folds, and abdomen) that reveal nothing about mental faculties.

(Some more truth in advertising: I have never found any aspect of Biden’s record in public life the slightest big impressive, and cannot imagine voting for him this fall.)

There’s little doubt that chronic stuttering can affect one’s frame of mind, and that it’s worsened by factors like stress and fatigue. But the roots are physical – and as Webster and his program have demonstrated, fluency can be dramatically improved through the kind of muscle-memory-strengthening practice that’s a proven way to enhance all manner of physical skills.

The stress and fatigue points are especially important because they surely explain some kinds of Biden difficulties that seem to be getting more common – specifically, repetitions of certain words or initial sounds of words, and unusual word choices. Here’s why:

Both behaviors amount to ways in which stutterers try to deal with whatever difficulties they’re facing at the moment. The repetitions generally represent efforts to generate enough momentum to power or zoom through the sound in question, or through the next word (which is anticipated to cause a problem). The unusual word choices are examples of “word substitution” – finding a word that’s expected to be easier to pronounce than the one the speaker was originally planning to use, either because he or she is worried about the repetition thing, or because they fear they won’t be able to voice even the initial sound of that word. (Even stranger – stutterers can also worry about words coming further down the verbal road.)

Because I’ve got a decent vocabulary, I’ve gotten pretty skilled at the kind of word substitution that’s difficult even for many other stutterers to detect (though fortunately, because I have learned to produce more fluent speech, I don’t have to use this ploy often any more). But even for someone with such advantages, word substitution can be challenging especially because in order to maintain a reasonably normal speech flow, very rapid decisions are needed. And feelings of slight panic, or memories of past panic and failed word substitution efforts, are never far out of mind.

Moreover – and finally, we get to the fatigue and stress angles – all of these responses are much more difficult to execute for stutterers who are tired and.or stressed, for reasons that should be obvious. What should also be obvious – 77-year olds tend to tire more often than younger folks, and the problem almost never gets better. (I’m 66 and certainly don’t have the energy I had at 56 or even 60. And sometimes it affect my speech.)

Political campaigns, moreover, can get pretty stressful, especially for office-seekers who aren’t killing it. And elderly political candidates can therefore face special problems. So although these Biden difficulties don’t necessarily demonstrate cognitive decline, they do point to emerging age-related issues that are matters of genuine concern.

One prime example of a Biden stumble that I believe has been described mistakenly as a moment of debility: his troubles speaking about healthcare issues during the Democratic debate in Detroit last July. Then, when it was imperative that he rebound from faring poorly in a previous event, and live up to his then-frontrunner status, his speech deteriorated significantly after a strong start.

The story is very different, however, when it comes to Biden episodes like declaring that mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio took place in Houston and Michigan; or claiming that he visited survivors of the Parkland, Florida shootings before the tragedy took place, along with assuming he was still Vice President in 2018. (Keep in mind that gun violence has been a special Biden interest.) Nor does stuttering explain confusing the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher both with a much more recent successor (Theresa May) – not to mention German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ditto for babbling about the authorization of U.S. military force in the Middle East. (Keep in mind: He’s supposed to be a foreign policy expert.) 

It’s similarly tough to square stuttering claims with mistaking New Hampshire for Vermont and Nevada with New Hampshire and Iowa for Ohio, or calling Fox News anchor Chris Wallace “Chuck,” or calling “Super Tuesday” “Super Thursday,” or telling voters this year that he’s running for the Senate, or claiming that the Democrats can win back the House of Representative this year (they already hold it), or boasting that his campaign “chooses truth over facts.”  (For the cites, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)  

A few of these can be written off to the kind of mixups heard from time to time from people of every age. But not all of them. Moreover, these supposed gaffes are qualitatively different from the type for which Biden has long been known – which have almost always involved indiscretions. 

And a particularly revealing sign that age is producing both more of these misstatements and even more stuttering (due to the fatigue and/or stress factors): In a long Atlantic piece on Biden’s speech (cited above and written, interestingly, by a reporter who stutters himself), the former Vice President said,

“he hasn’t felt himself caught in a traditional stutter in several decades. ‘I mean, I can’t remember a time where I’ve ever worried before a crowd of 80,000 people or 800 people or 80 people—I haven’t had that feeling of dread since, I guess, speech class in college.’”

These Biden problems by no means disqualify him for the Presidency. Even if I’m right about growing signs of cognitive decline, they may stabilize, or worsen very slowly. But they also may accelerate. And however difficult this year’s Democratic primaries have been for Biden, the general election will surely be far worse. (See this article on the physical and emotional strains suffered by recent White House hopefuls.)

So obviously, these issues need to be discussed openly and frankly – and of course for all the candidates. For now that above all mean that not all of Biden’s lapses should be written off as “simple” stutter.

Im-Politic: The China/Biden Opportunity Sanders Needs to Seize

Tags

Bernie Sanders, China, China virus, coronavirus, Democrats, drugs, election 2020, health security, Im-Politic, Jobs, Joe Biden, manufacturing, Michigan primary, pharmaceuticals, technology, Trade, World Trade Organization, WTO

Since he emerged as a major rival to Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been criticized for lacking a killer instinct. Specifically, he’s generally declined to attack his competitors as harshly as many supporters and supposed political pros would like. (The articles here and here nicely frame the history.)  

I don’t feel qualified to weigh in on this debate, but with a crucial primary coming up in Michigan tomorrow, it’s clear to me that the progressive standard-bearer could use more of a killer instinct on a big policy issue: former Vice President Joe Biden’s record on China issues.

Sanders has decided to assail Biden on his overall trade record, which makes sense considering the latter’s support for the kind of trade deals and policy decisions (like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the rush to expand commerce of all kinds with China) that have hammered workers in manufacturing-heavy states like Michigan. 

But his focus is far too narrow, especially considering developments over the last few years and particularly the last few months. For the Democratic Socialist is solely emphasizing the job and wages loss resulting from agreements like the Biden-endorsed deal that supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 – which granted Beijing vital legal protection against unilateral American efforts to fight its protectionism and other forms of economic predation. That mattered greatly because many of these Chinese transgressions persisted post-WTO and by all accounts have worsened under the regime of Xi Jinping.

It’s now clear, however, that the China threat is even worse because it’s far broader; that Biden as long-time Senator from Delaware in particular flunked those non-economic policy tests, too; and that the biggest arguably was the WTO vote. So despite signs from polls that Americans generally (though not necessarily in manufacturing centers) aren’t as opposed to pre-Trump trade policies as in the past, the same surveys make clear that all manner of China-related concerns are mounting, and that therefore hitting Biden for supporting measures that have clearly increased Beijing’s wealth, power, and consequent capacities to threaten key U.S. interests in many fields would succeed roaringly.

Indeed, Biden’s stated justification in 2000 for favoring the crucial WTO decision looks especially and dangerously loopy nearly two decades later, when a Chinese cover-up helped the coronavirus become a serious threat to the United States and the rest of the world at large, when American leaders have finally become aware of how the industrial offshoring accelerated by the WTO move has made the nation shockingly dependent on healthcare products from China, and when the PRC’s official press has just published an article all but threatening to plunge the United States into coronavirus hell by blocking the export of the drugs and their chemical ingredients needed to fight the pandemic.

For in 2000, Biden made clear that he mainly supported China’s entry into the trade body – and ending the policy of granting Beijing tariff breaks only on an annual basis and only if its repressive human rights practices improved – in the belief that this new approach would both promote political and economic freedom in China and help “encourage” its “development as a productive, responsible member of the world community.”

Moreover, Biden not only guzzled the kool-aid of claims that WTO entry would foster greater political as well as economic freedoms in China. He argued that such change was exactly what most of China’s leaders intended. These dictators, he argued,

“have consciously undertaken–for their own reasons, not ours–a fundamental transformation of the communist system that so long condemned their great people to isolation, poverty, and misery. They have been forced to acknowledge the failure of communism, and have conceded the irrefutable superiority of an open market economy.”

Biden was right in noting that economic reforms already by then undertaken had greatly improved living standards for enormous numbers of Chinese. But he was completely wrong in believing that “this growing prosperity” would start bringing more democratic reform and a move toward genuinely open markets. Nor did he foresee that because China’s economic progress depended on amassing ever greater trade surpluses in ever more sophisticated products – and especially with the United States, the world’s biggest, most lucrative market – much of the rise in Chinese living standards would come at the expense of American domestic manufacturing and its workforce.

In fact, Biden explicitly scoffed at fears that WTO entry would bring about “the collapse of the American manufacturing economy, as China, a nation with the impact on the world economy about the size of the Netherlands, suddenly becomes our major economic competitor.”

But in light of China’s growing international belligerence particularly under Xi Jinping, it’s disturbing that the then-Senator – supposedly a foreign policy expert – was equally blind to the likelihood that a WTO-fostered “emergence of a prosperous, independent, China on the world stage” would enable China to flout “international norms in the areas of trade, security, and human rights” whenever it chose, rather than strengthen China’s loyalty to that “liberal global order.” 

Sanders and other critics of the WTO decision rightly derided all of these declared convictions. But I’ve yet to hear him spotlight the dangers to America’s global technology leadership and therefore national security (including health security) generated and continually worsened by the richer, stronger China made possible by the policies supported by Biden and the rest of the bipartisan globalist establishment that ran Washington, D.C. – and U.S. China policy – before Donald Trump’s election as President. P.S. A China that achieved its strategic goals could decimate American living standards still further.

This presidential campaign has already featured so many ups and downs, and so many front-runners who have risen and fallen, that Michigan probably won’t be  Sanders’ last chance to mount a broad-brush attack on Biden’s atrocious China record. (Just FYI, as of this afternoon, the polls show Sanders getting thumped.) The continuing coronavirus fallout could create further opportunities for him as well.

What is clear, however, and to large, growing numbers of Americans, is that enabling the rise of China ranks as one of the most potentially calamitous mistakes in American history.  And the sooner Sanders starts exploiting Biden’s role in enabling it (which continued during the do-nothing Obama administration), the better.     

Im-Politic: Bernie’s Conspiracy Charges are Wrong (So Far)

Tags

Bernie Sanders, caucuses, Democratic Party, Democrats, election 2020, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, moderates, primaries, progressives, Super Tuesday

As must be clear to RealityChek readers, I’m no fan of Joe Biden’s. What may be less clear is that I have a soft spot for Bernie Sanders. That’s largely because the Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont is the only one of his party’s current presidential candidates that I’ve dealt with personally – and in small meetings on the subject, and generally speaking, he’s been terrific on U.S. trade policy.

But even though I’ve always considered the former Vice President’s record on this key matter – and most others – miserable (see, e.g., here), it’s clear now, in the wake of the Super Tuesday Democratic primary results, there’s no case to be made that the party’s establishment-arians are effectively rigging the campaign against the more left-leaning Sanders, either because they abhor his policies or because they think he’ll blow the chance they see of defeating President Trump and performing well in House and Senate races this fall.

Instead, yesterday’s voting, along with the totals from earlier primaries and caucuses, show what polls have consistently found: Most Democratic voters have remained moderate, or at least so describe themselves. Relatively few view themselves as being “very liberal. And these Democrats, as so many candidates have pointed out, “don’t want a revolution.”

Of course, because politics and policy are never totally, or even largely, separate, the results of Election 2020 can also be read as supporting an alternative interpretation, but one that’s also been consistently found in opinion surveys: Even many Democrats who might align best with Sanders (or other progressive candidates, like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren), seem to be voting for moderates because they view them as the best hope for ousting Mr. Trump.

Moreover, the Democratic results debunk another major belief about Democratic primary voters in another curious way. The conventional wisdom has long held, and maintained this year, that activists closest to the party’s left-wing fringe would dominate turnout – or at least vote at rates considerably greater than their actual representation in Democratic ranks. (Similar conclusions have been drawn about Republicans, as this popular textbook demonstrates.) But the clear majorities voting for Biden and other moderate candidates throughout the campaign to date indicate that even many progressive voters are holding their ideological noses and pragmatically backing the candidates they believe will perform best against the President this fall.

And perhaps most interestingly, the Super Tuesday and other results place in an unusually interesting light the Democratic Party’s recent shift to the progressive end. Not that the shift hasn’t taken place. But at least according to the Pew survey linked above and this Gallup data series, it’s still left moderates and liberals with a slim majority. And these voters seem to be turning out this election year.

Two big related questions remain, though. First, there’s no doubt that moderate Democratic candidates like Biden and recent drop-outs Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, thought that the progressives held the upper hand in primary voting. That’s why they’ve pandered so heavy-handedly on issues like race relations and gender identity and immigration issues. Now that the Super Tuesday votes are (nearly all) in, will survivor Biden tack back to the center?

Second, even if he does, has the former Vice President made too many far-out statements on such matters already that they’ll still be effective ammunition for President Trump?

I don’t doubt that if the Democratic establishment thought that it needed to or could rig the process against Sanders, it would. Recent history makes that clear. I also understand that the quick campaign exits and Biden endorsements of Buttigieg, Bloomberg, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar look suspicious to Sanders World (and maybe to much of its Warren counterpart?). And of course, if Biden falters for whatever reason (health, a genuinely troubling gaffe, his son Hunter’s fishy activities in Ukraine and China), this establishment could spring into action in the back rooms once again.   

But at this point, unless you’re totally paranoid, you need to recognize that the Democratic primaries are reflecting what the party’s voters, not its bosses, want. And their obvious message is that moderate Joe Biden is “the One.”

Im-Politic: Why the Haters are Wrong About Trump and the Coronavirus

Tags

CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, Council on Foreign Relations, Im-Politic, impeachment, pandemic, public health, Senate, The New York Times, Think Global Health, Trump, WHO, World Health Organization

President Trump sure is getting slammed for his response to the coronavirus outbreak, both by the Mainstream Media, many Democratic Party politicians, and even some public health specialists. (See here and here.) Their main indictments: He’s been hopelessly behind the curve. Or has it been that he’s been too alarmist? Both charges have been made, making clear that the substance doesn’t matter much to the critics.

One allegation seems justified to me: The President’s latest (fiscal 2021) budget request included a 16 percent cut in outlays for the Centers for Disease Control, the branch of the Cabinet-level federal Department of Health and Human Services in charge of the nation’s health security. The budget document was made public eleven days after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak to be an international public health emergency, and six days after Mr. Trump promised in his State of the Union address to take “all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the disease.

But the main problem with the CDC decision, as I see it, is political. Clearly, the timing was terrible, and was bound to be jumped on by reasonable and unreasonable critics alike. Indeed, all of the President’s budget requests have sought such cuts – which also deserves criticism even though Mr. Trump eventually accepted higher funding in the final budget deals each time.

Substantively, however, it’s inconceivable that had any of the sought cuts been actually made, they would have made a discernible difference in the nation’s early-stage anti-coronavirus efforts at least. After all, how could even more money have enabled the agency to predict or identify the virus once it broke out, since it cught China itself by surprise; and since Beijing still refusedsto let U.S. officials as such into the country to aid its own efforts?

It’s true that last year, the Trump administration ended a program in the U.S. government’s foreign aid agency aimed precisely at improving the detection of corona-type viruses “with pandemic potential.” According to ABC News, the program (called PREDICT) “is credited with identifying nearly a thousand” of these maladies since its creation in 2009. Which sounds great. Except the coronavirus clearly wasn’t one of them.

But as for being slow on the coronavirus uptake (a line of attack that’s – understandably – shown more staying power than the “overreaction” claims), timelines showing milestones in the virus’ identification and spread, and principal Trump administration responses demonstrate nothing of the kind. (My main sources are the Think Global Health initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading U.S. think tank; and The New York Times.)

They remind us that the first recorded onset of symptoms, in Wuhan, China, came on December 1, that Chinese authorities first told the World Health Organization (WHO) that something was rotten in that city on December, 31, and that Beijing took its own first anti-virus action the following day – closing a seafood market thought to have been the the origin point.

On January 21, the United States confirmed finding the first domestic American case of the virus – in a man who had traveled to Wuhan. By this time, China had reported six virus-related deaths, and several hundred cases.

A day later, WHO convened its first coronavirus meeting, and ultimately decided against declaring the outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. On January 23 came the first Chinese travel restrictions and quarantines.

Between January 24 and 26, Washington identified four more American cases, and on the 27^th, by which time 3,000 victims around the world had contracted the disease and 60 had died, announced screening programs at domestic airports that handled 90 percent of passengers coming from China along with CDC initiatives “to identify potential cases.” In addition, a high level State Department travel advisory had been announced for Wuhan, and President Trump had spoken with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and offered assistance.

On January 28 and 29, the United States began evacuating its nationals from Wuhan – dates which are significant because it wasn’t until the following day that WHO finally decided to declare the virus an official public health emergency. On the 31^st, as The New York Times reported, the administration announced that it “would bar entry by most foreign nationals who had recently visited China and put some American travelers under a quarantine as it declared a rare public health emergency.” At the time, worldwide deaths totaled 213 and cases approached 9,800 (eleven in the United States). Also significant – these actions came a day before the first coronavirus death outside China was reported (in the Philippines).

Official U.S. actions by no means stopped then. On February 5, all Peace Corps volunteers were evacuated from China and the CDC starting sending diagnostic kits to more than one hundred laboratories in the United States. (The Food & Drug Administration authorized the tests to be conducted by the kits the day before.) Two days later, on the seventh, the administration pledged $100 million to the global coronavirus fight.

The last week of January, incidentally, was kind of interesting for another reason: President Trump was being tried in the Senate on two articles of impeachment – which themselves represented the culmination of what I’m sure we’ll all agree was a great deal of work by Democrats in the House and Senate, as well as voluminous reporting by the national media. The journalism of course, included the publication of scoops of any number of supposed bombshell revelations about the President’s misdeeds, and even though acquittal seemed certain to most, they clearly sent the President and his top aides scrambling on an ongoing basis and surely occupied a great deal of their time.

Moreover, the trial didn’t end (with the acquittal vote) until February 5 – the date that the Peace Corps volunteers were being evacuated and the CDC diagnostic kits were being issued.

I fully accept that Presidents need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and that indeed, the ability to manage crises successfully, and during the worst of circumstances, is the most important qualification for the job. It’s also possible that the administration has already lost crucial time in the anti-coronavirus fight, and that consequently it will never catch up.

But the above timelines reveal to me, anyway, that the American record so far measures up well versus that of any other national government, and especially well versus that of WHO, which is supposed to be the tip of the spear here. Moreover, the Trump administration response seems all the more alert upon remembering that, as the virus was breaking out, the President was, if not literally fighting for his own life, relentlessly besieged by adversaries both inside and outside his government.  I suspect that posterity, as a result, will need to struggle to judge his initial coronavirus policy decisions as failures.

Im-Politic: Have Americans Got Family Policy All Wrong?

Tags

David Brooks, education, extended family, families, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, nuclear family, social policy, The Atlantic, women

David Brooks has scored a four-bagger with his new Atlantic article on whether the recent American focus on maintaining and fortifying the nuclear family has been such a hot idea. He’s powerfully challenged the conventional wisdom about a long-time social and cultural institution and public policy goal. He’s taught readers fascinating and important lessons about American social history. He’s spotlighted a host of recent developments and trends on this crucial front. And (I guess this is just my own personal bag) in the process, he’s reminded me of what a clueless snob I can be in jumping to conclusions.

To continue momentarily on a personal note, I was staring in disbelief as I wrote most of the above, for Brooks, a New York Times columnist, has never struck me as much more than the kind of establishment conservative who long dominated the Republican Party and the right half of the mainstream media, and who’s spent the last three years bitterly inveighing against the rise of Trump-ian populism – without offering any useful suggestions as to what might replace it.

It’s true that Brooks had also made quite a name for himself as a social and cultural commentator, but I never paid much attention to these writings. If his new Atlantic article is any indication, that was a major mistake.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with Brooks’ main policy argument – that it’s no longer possible to restore the nuclear family’s primacy in American society, because that prominence only emerged because of overall national conditions in the post-World War II United States that simply can’t be replicated. In particular, I still strongly doubt that the developments that have weakened the nuclear family were inevitable, or were all inevitable, and are therefore irreversible.

I’m thinking of indiscriminate economic globalization and Open Borders-friendly mass immigration policies that have destroyed generations of middle class jobs and the incomes and economic opportunity they create; welfare policies that surely discouraged to some degree the maintenance, especially in the African-American community, of traditional two-parent families; the ever-mounting incompetence of the nation’s public primary and secondary schools; and a values transition that (thankfully) fostered greater social and cultural freedom and diversity, but that also unmistakably encouraged individualism, pointless exhibitionism, and the insistence on instant gratification to run riot, and all but scorned the idea of commonly accepted norms, self-restraint, and short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.

In other words, maybe the dominance of the nuclear family nurtured much of the economic progress and prosperity in particular that characterized the 1950s and 1960s, rather than the other way around.

But what I’m thinking mainly about today aren’t those big policy and (inevitably politicized) questions, but about some of the forms of extended families that Brooks mentioned prominently, and that I had completely forgotten about. Not that I’m the only one. But this blind spot recently led me in particular to ridicule someone and his outlook on life (not to his face, but to friends and relatives) who deserved much better.

It came at a wedding during which at one point, the father of the groom stood up to give his toast to the happy couple, and began waxing nostalgic (as parents at these moments understandably do) about the good old days of his son’s youth. He was anything but silver-tongued, but one point he made struck me at the time as especially absurd and revealingly parochial. Back then, he pointed out, so many of the aunts and uncles and cousins lived on the same block, and we saw each other all the time. But now, most of the family has spread out as far as – and he named a town a whole two towns, and only a few miles, away.

I found this hilariously small-minded, and missed few opportunities to bring up his remarks and what the volumes they allegedly and unflatteringly spoke about this kind of crimped perspective (which also characterized many attendees at the affair).

But as Brooks’ article pointed out, these types of extended families have been the norm for much of American history, and boasted and nurtured many virtues that sadly are in short supply today – like community and mutual support and the spread of constructive social and personal norms and values.

So as I was reading his piece, I began to think that yes, there’s a big difference between being able to spontaneously run into relatives just by stepping out the front door and seeing them on the front porch across the street, or at the supermarket, and needing to take a short drive two towns over in order to visit.

And I began thinking about the history of both sides of my own childhood nuclear family. My father’s father came to America from Lithuania and was aided almost as soon as he stepped off the boat not only by various Jewish-American charities, but by relatives that preceded him and by an organization comprised of other immigrants from the same town. He remained active in their affairs for the next five or six decades.

My mother’s parents lived in a small apartment building in the south-ish Bronx that was full of related families. I spent the first nine years of my own life in a small apartment building in Flushing, Queens (New York City) that was dominated by two or three closely-related families. They not only socialized constantly; they took summer vacations with each other at the same bungalow colony a little ways upstate.

So most of my playmates were each other’s cousins. Moreover, I also went to grade school with and hung out with a bunch of Irish-American kids from across the street who were related as well. Meanwhile, when we were very young, the various mothers took their turns walking us the six blocks to and from P.S. 20. And at about the same time, when my brother was born, we moved upstairs to a larger apartment in the same building and my mother’s mother moved into our old place. I.e., instant babysitter!

These networks, by the way, didn’t vanish even in the suburban north shore of Long Island to which my family moved in the early 1960s. Even though single family houses had replaced apartment buildings, lots of our neighbors in our community were very chummy, and have remained so. Ditto for their kids. (My father was kind of standoffish for various reasons, but the sheer number of chuldren for my brother and I to play with and the advantages of car-pooling kept us at least in the outer reaches of these circles.)

Nor, apparently, was this community unique. I was very moved about a year ago to read a Facebook post from an alum of my high school (who I didn’t know but have connected with since) to another alum (who I didn’t know either and haven’t connected with) fondly remembering the days when all the families on their block held cookouts and other backyard parties together and went on outings and looked after each other’s kids.

And according to Brooks, these patterns and structures were common during the 1950s and 1960s:

“[N]uclear families in this era were much more connected to other nuclear families than they are today—constituting a “modified extended family,” as the sociologist Eugene Litwak calls it, ‘a coalition of nuclear families in a state of mutual dependence.’ Even as late as the 1950s, before television and air-conditioning had fully caught on, people continued to live on one another’s front porches and were part of one another’s lives. Friends felt free to discipline one another’s children.”

Brooks isn’t indiscriminately nostalgic for extended families, and rightly notes major drawbacks:

“[T]hey can…be exhausting and stifling. They allow little privacy; you are forced to be in daily intimate contact with people you didn’t choose. There’s more stability but less mobility. Family bonds are thicker, but individual choice is diminished. You have less space to make your own way in life.”

And no small matter: “[M]ost women were relegated to the home. Many corporations, well into the mid-20th century, barred married women from employment: Companies would hire single women, but if those women got married, they would have to quit. Demeaning and disempowering treatment of women was rampant. Women spent enormous numbers of hours trapped inside the home under the headship of their husband, raising children.”

Further, these extended families do tend to encourage parochialism that can too easily degenerate into outright ignorance of, indifference to, and even hostility toward the outside world, or certain major portions of it.

Is some kind of middle ground possible? Brooks insists that that train has left the station:

“Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal.”

Again, I’m skeptical about abject pessimism – just as I am about Brooks’ (cautious) optimism about the possibility of building a healthy society with many more non-nuclear families and many fewer nuclear families than even exist today. More important for now, though, is recognizing Brooks’ stunning achievement – which will force any but the completely closed-minded to start thinking.

Im-Politic: Bloomberg in China’s Pocket?

Tags

China, election 2020, Financial Times, Im-Politic, Ivanka Trump, Laura Ingraham, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Kranish, Trump, Washington Post, Xi JInPing

Boy! I thought Michael Bloomberg’s business’ dependence on China was worrisome when I first read this early January Financial Times report on the billionaire Democratic presidential candidate’s lucrative conference-holding business in the People’s Republic!

Then thanks to a segment last week on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News cable talk show, I checked out this Washington Post piece on the same subject – which I somehow missed – and I’ve gotten even more worried. And since Bloomberg has been rising steadily in the polls in recent weeks, and is spending a big chunk of his fortune on the campaign, you should be worried, too.

Now I know what at least some of you are thinking: President Trump and his family have done a lot of business with China, too. So why single out the former New York City mayor?

Here’s why: First, I strongly agreed that it was unacceptable for presidential daughter Ivanka Trump to stay involved in any way with her fashion business after her father’s election, especially since it sourced products from China and sought to sell in the Chinese market. She finally agreed with this (widespread) view and shut down the brand in mid-2018. So that’s one big difference between the Trumps and Bloomberg, since the latter is still making big bucks in China.

More important, though – with Trump tariffs still in place on literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of prospective Chinese exports to the United States, and the President having made life tough for China in numerous other major ways ranging from prosecuting telecommunications giant Huawei to strongly supporting Taiwan in word and deed, can anyone seriously believe that Mr. Trump has been soft on Beijing?

Bloomberg, by contrast, clearly has, and his record of panda-hugging is not only several years old, but has continued unabated during his run for the White House. The aforementioned Post article spells out in detail the pro-China positions he’s taken, which include opposition to the Trump tariffs (without explaining how he’d deal with Chinese trade abuses he’s acknowledged) and the insistence that China’s communist leader Xi Jinping “is not a dictator” (made as Beijing was cracking down on Hong Kong’s democracy protests and imprisoning on a massive, concentration camp-like scale members of the country’s Muslim Uighur minority group.

And when his ongoing business dealings with the Chinese are examined in detail, it’s easy to see why Bloomberg has worked so hard to remain in Beijing’s good graces. For example, as the Post reported, Bloomberg ”expanded one of his company’s financial indexes, which could steer $150 billion into China while earning his firm an undisclosed amount in fees.”

In effect, this move awarded the Chinese government and the various commercial and financial entities it controls a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval valued immensely by big institutional investors who control trillions of dollars worth of savings around the world.

Moreover, according to Post reporter Michael Kranish, “mainland China accounts for 1 percent of Bloomberg LP’s [$10 billion in annual] revenue and Hong Kong for another 4 percent.”

As for those China conferences, the Financial Times revealed that

“live events now make up nearly 15 per cent of all revenues for the news division that sits within the billionaire’s financial data company.

“This has grown from less than 1 per cent in 2014, thanks largely to the success of one event: the New Economy Forum. Mr Bloomberg launched the conference last year, aimed at connecting global business leaders with the Chinese elite.

“Only in its second year, the NEF already makes up about 65 per cent of all live events revenue for Bloomberg Media, according to a spokesperson.”

And if you still doubt China’s importance to Bloomberg’s coffers, consider that, as Kranish wrote, Bloomberg “has led efforts since 2015 to make it easier for U.S. companies to trade in Chinese currency, a move embraced by China’s largest banks” – which are of course all run by the state.

Bloomberg’s successes in public opinion surveys anyway has led to charges that he’s trying to buy the presidency. At least equally important to ask is whether the Chinese have bought Bloomberg.