OT Coronavirus: America in chaos, News and Updates. One million Americans dead and counting

Will this count for a mask?

 

sounds like a class act

 

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/trump-rewrites-the-book-on-emergencies-11587142872


Trump Rewrites the Book on Emergencies
For the first time in U.S. history, an administration is responding to a crisis with deregulation and decentralization.
By


Christopher DeMuth

April 17, 2020 1:01 pm ET
Washington’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is upending one of the most durable patterns of American politics. Throughout history, national emergencies have led to a more powerful and centralized federal government and to the transfer of federal power from Congress to the executive branch. This time, the federal response rests largely on state and local government and private enterprise, with a wave of deregulation clearing the way. The Trump administration has seized no new powers, and Congress has stayed energetically in the game.

The historical pattern is powerful and might have seemed inevitable. In times of war, natural disaster and economic upheaval, action is king. The president and his officials and agencies can act with much greater dispatch than Congress can. They may be forgiven for crossing statutory or even constitutional boundaries—in a crisis, the test of legitimacy is perceived effectiveness. But emergency actions often set precedents for normal times.

Moreover, crises generate proposals for preventing their recurrence. These typically take the form of an agency that, with the benefit of hindsight, could have nipped the crisis in the bud. Positing an omnicompetent government authority is political misdirection: It elides the profound problems of uncertainty and conflicting information and interpretation that precede every catastrophe. That is a sure recipe for highly concentrated, discretionary power.

These tendencies were dramatically on display in the first two national emergencies of the 21st century, 9/11 and the 2008 financial collapse. In response to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration and Congress created two gigantic agencies with extraordinary powers and insulation from congressional control, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Intelligence was centralized and bureaucratized; federal police powers were extended down to driver’s licenses and much else; the administration established wide-ranging surveillance programs.

In response to the 2008 crisis, the administration arranged corporate mergers and bailouts with only fig leaves of statutory authority. It spent hundreds of billions of dollars without congressional appropriation. These crisis expedients provided the template for the Obama administration’s unilateral responses to mere political frustrations—congressional inaction on its climate change, immigration and other legislative proposals. At the same time, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 commissioned an army of new regulatory authorities with unprecedented discretion and autonomy.

It is not only crises that propel the administrative state. Lesser events of the 2000s—accounting scandals and a spike in energy prices—also led to new layers of freewheeling federal power. But major emergencies have unfailingly been major inflection points.

Until now. In responding to the coronavirus, the Trump administration has confined itself to longstanding statutory authorities that have been invoked routinely in responding to lesser emergencies. President Trump has used the Stafford Act of 1988 to provide states with emergency financial assistance—but has deferred to their decisions regarding social confinement, business closures, testing and treatment. He has employed the Defense Production Act of 1950 to cajole manufactures to prioritize urgently needed medical equipment—but has relied primarily on consultation, coordination and publicity to coach a private-sector-led mobilization. He has declared a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which can potentially trigger extraordinary regulatory powers—but so far he has used it only for deregulatory purposes, waiving Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act rules that restrict telemedicine and interstate medical practice.

Mr. Trump has received criticism from all sides for these measured responses. It is said, on the one hand, that he should aggressively commandeer state police powers and industrial resources to mount a uniform national response—and, on the other (sometimes by the same critics), that the crisis will sooner or later unleash the authoritarian ambitions Mr. Trump has supposedly been harboring all along.

His replies have been characteristically adamant. He has extolled his administration’s performance on the measures that are unarguably federal jurisdictions—restricting foreign travel, deploying the military’s medical resources, mobilizing production of materials in short supply and allocating them among states and cities, providing information on the spread of the virus and guidance on mitigation measures. He has been jealous of federal prerogatives and sharply critical of governors and business executives he regarded as uncooperative.

 

How stupid can you be. Stay-at-home orders are the exact opposite to sending Jews to concentration camps. The Jews knew being sent to one meant their likely deaths. A stay-at-home order issued is to prevent death.

 

There is no doubt, she is a wacko.

She is to the extreme right wing what Sanders is to the extreme left wing.

 

What an idiotic thing to say

 

newest fashion for social distancing

 

I must have missed that highlighted part first time around as that's a totally hilarious statement that my post you responded to proved that I hate trump. Hell son, all you had to do is ask me if all my posts from the past hadn't convinced you.

 

Sounds fun. Wanna learn to juggle? I hear it’s great during this mitigation.

 

It is a lightswitch, we shut things down and it shut off.

Also, your premise ignores the people who have already had the disease.

they’re much more likely to attend events, go to the gym, etc.

The faster people get infected — and recover — the more people who will be willing and able to go out in public.

This also ignores the population who are already willing to “risk it” because they think they are invincible ... look no further than the beaches in Jacksonville opening up.

Will it be “back to normal”? Probably not.

But we don’t need back to normal. ANYTHING that stimulates the economy would be beneficial, to some.

And applying it to my own life, if they lifted regulations, I’d go back to business as usual & fly back to the States.

I also assume it would be like going to a Portland Fire game back in the day... I could get nosebleed seats then end up front row.

Works for me.

If every state re-opened tomorrow do you think it wouldn’t have an impact (positively) on the economy? That seems like the bigger question. I would bet my life it would.

Not saying it’s the best idea ... but the economic argument is accurate and quite viable, imo.