Surely, they’ve got the expertise…well maybe not
- Mark Meadows, Associate of Arts (not a BA), Univ. of South Florida
- Ivanka Trump, BA BS Economics, Wharton
- Jared Kushner, BA Government, Harvard; JD/MBA, NYU
- Steve Mnuchin, BA Economics, Yale
- Larry Kudlow, BA History, Rochester
- Robert Lighthizer, BA Georgetown, JD Georgetown
- Wilbur Ross, BA Yale, MBA Harvard
Well, I had a BA in economics before advanced studies, and I wouldn’t have considered that adequate preparation for figuring out how to open up an economy in a pandemic. And perhaps a public health expert would’a been nice.
Here are links to some plans, all of which involve large amounts of testing.
Menzie One small correction. Wharton does not offer a BA in economics. Ivanka Trump’s undergraduate degree was a BS in economics.
2slugbaits: Thanks – fixed!
Bachelor of Science or what most people think of when one writes BS?
Naughty boy, thinking about the BS word.
Menzie is envious again, Menzie has never been the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.
But even Barkley agrees, Ivanka is really sexy.
Though she always looks like being on speed, her eyes ..
I guess you are the kind of guy who thinks it was cool for Donald Trump to tell Howard Stern how hot his daughter was. Me? That stick is too skinny and a bit dumb. But not as dumb as her husband.
really sexy??? you need to go to specsavers my friend
so her economics degree is BS. Thats not nice!
I agree with another commenter. Chelsea Clinton has the background and intelligence to make a contirbution here.
Trump seems to have an overwhelming desire for easy answers. Maybe that’s a political choice on his part, a conclusion that his base likes easy answers. Maybe it’s an intellectual failing. His first response to news of U.S. infections was to say they’d just go away. Next was using a parasite medicine to cure a virus. Trade wars are easy, rigght.?
Anyhow, what we have here is the easy-answers team. An insider-trading specialist, Trump’s own daughter, a son-in-law who cuts corners just like Trump, gimme-a-break freakin’ Mark Meadows, a Treasury Secretary who specializes in shopping trips for his wife on government money, and a TV “economist” who has never done his own analysis. Lighthizer’s only easy-answers problem is that he thinks China is behind all of our problems, so I’ll call him the exception, though it’s not clear he deserves it.
And the easy answers is… whatever Trump says it is! Worthless.
duck : the core of trumps success is easy answers for most difficult questions. This is what the majority really likes. May I quote the, btw very intelligent (PhD) but insane, Joseph Goebbels here : “People are incredible stupid; they do not judge by substance but by appearance.”
Clearly Trump’s little minnie me. I guess we should expect more of the same – really dumb idolation for a real dumb man.
May things are going to reopen no matter this council. By June, it will start really reopening. By July normalcy will be back 100%.
Doubtful. Whether it’s warranted or not.
And in August, we will all be quarantined again because of foolish impatience. But who cares! Dead people do not matter so long as TV ratings stay high. Besides, who could predict that an infectious virus would spread again? MAGA!
Utterly impossible.
Absolutely happening. It doesn’t do well in warmth. It may reorganize by fall, but that is not a certainty. You going to keep getting cases like any virus.
Thank you Dr. Kudlow for your completely uninformed opinion with respect to the seasonality issue. Of course the RAGE has yet to provide a shred of real support for his incessant BS so why start now?
It is what it is.
Jared is the third one from the right:
https://youtu.be/gFqSanlg3Sw?t=28
Luckily, they all have their donald trump written song books with them.
i am glad the trump supporters like corev, rick stryker and bruce are all in on having ivanka trump determine the economic future of our nation. i feel as though i am in good hands now. nothing but the best minds for this discussion. continue promoting the trump brand, it will protect you from covid19.
at least i can sleep at night knowing that the major states on the east and west coast have formed their own committee, independent of trump, and will make decisions based upon facts, economics and science. at least the economic recovery will be lead by the governors, rather than the president. look where his leadership took us over the past couple of months. “absolute authority” be damned.
I think Menzie may have finally “had it” with my YT links. For the record, I “get it” and there is no animosity on this point. I know going through blog comments gets tedious, so….. that’s understandable. The blog provides a service, and it was NOT intentional, but maybe I was abusing that on some level.
FYI:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/us/politics/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-endorsement.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
29% of the team are Trump’s relatives.
If nepotism is the criteria, Chelsea Clinton has a Masters Degree in Public Health from Columbia. She also has a PhD in International Relations from Oxford and along the way wrote a thesis “The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria: A Response to Global Threats, a Part of a Global Future”.
Take Jared in contrast. He only had two accomplishments in his entire life — being born rich and then marrying rich. It cost his father $2.5 million to buy Jared’s way into Harvard.
They used to say about George W. Bush that he’s so dumb, he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. For Jared they say he is so dumb, he was born on third base and thought he hit a home run.
Well, well. It looks like John Roberts and his Four Horsemen’s attempt to kill Wisconsin residents by forcing an election that never should have been held in order to cement a Republican majority on the state supreme court was all for naught. It was all about voter suppression — in this case suppression of life.
The liberal judge won decisively 54 to 46.
Notably the Roberts court forced the election to go on risking lives at the very same time the Roberts court has cancelled its own scheduled oral arguments because it was considered too dangerous. These conservatives are sociopathic ideologues.
Maybe we are seeing the tide turn a bit. This country might actually get back to being itself instead of MAGAland.
The alluring and captivating Miss Gita Gopinath will be giving a public address on World Economic Outlook. Tomorrow morning 7:30 central standard time. You can find it on YT.
Tuesday that is.
“In the vacuum of federal leadership, governors and mayors of many states and cities have taken the lead in implementing aggressive measures to suppress transmission. Now they may well need to take the lead in developing a plan to end the crisis.” – Center for American Progress.
Cuomo hosted a conference call with the governors of the Northeast Region which expressed some smart ideas including the need for testing. Cuomo is basically our national leader given we still have a pack of clowns occupying the White House.
And west coast states have banded together to figure it out. Expect some angry snark about Washington, Oregon, and California during tomorrow’s orange guppy rant session.
Crazily enough, even Liz Cheney slapped down the orange guppy’s claim of absolute power. He wants absolute authority without any corresponding responsibility, plus he hasn’t read the Constitution. Or if he has, he doesn’t understand it. Imagine that.
Does he read anything? We know he has never read Presidential Daily Briefing.
“WEO” is now available, I just downloaded it. Gita was stupendous at the presser (though the bringer of bad news). I cannot rain down enough compliments on Miss Gopinath so I guess I will spare all of you my fawning adulations.
John Oliver had a great segment on Sunday night about Larry Kudlow’s wife. She’s an self-employed artist and applied for one of small-business loans. Kudlow said it was really easy for her to fill out the one page form. It still begs the question why someone who is married to a millionaire Trump Administration official would even want to apply. No word on whether she was approved. Here’s an article with the embedded link to the show: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/john-oliver-unemployed-essential-workers-coronavirus-982557/
So maybe Prince Jared and Princess Ivanka won’t be part of the Council to Re-Open the Economy??? That would mean Fox News got it wrong.
Nah. They heard the guffaws of laughter from the entire country and decided to pull them and pretend it never happened.
Just announced: a similar blue ribbon committee of experts to revise rules for Major League Baseball. Participants include
RuPaul
Hulk Hogan
Katy Perry
Vin Diesel
Wendy Williams
Dr. Oz
CoRev
Eric Trump
Cliven Bundy
5-star comment by noneconomist
You should have added Oprah on as “arbiter of tie-breakers”.
I am wondwring if this is for real or Fox goofing up with a speculative report. I just googled “Council to Reopen America” because I have seen nothing on this on some usual places like Daily Kos. I found only one source, Vanity Fair 17 hiurs ago, putting out this list. I saw a bunch of sources ranging from Business Insider to Vox to just 2 hours ago Golf International putting out various speculations about who will be on the list, with names like Pence, Laffer,Hassett, and even Mike Monahan being mentioned as possibiities, with supposedly the matter of Kushner in particular a hot issue. But all of these were speculative, who might be on this council.
It does not look like it has been definitively selected, despite this report from Fox. They do goof up sometimes.
@ Barkley Rosser
Quit putting your car keys in the refrigerator and your grilled cheese sandwich in the mailbox, you’ll be certain to have more time to figure these things out:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/14/cuomo-new-york-reopen-trump-185313
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/13/newsom-pushes-west-coast-pact-with-oregon-washington-on-reopening-economy-1275486
What is this dumb wisecrack about, Moses? Your links do not even appear to be relevant to the questrion.
As it is, I called itr. This was a false report by Fox News. There is as of yet no official Council to Reopen America, with the latest reports having thr Trumpsters trying to drag in all sorts of groups and people to be associated with this My 1 reopening that may turn into a health disaster, including the US Chamber of Commerce, the Heritage Foundation, Henry Paulson, with the likes of Hannity’s top candidates laffer and Moore jumping up and down to get lots of attention.
@ Barkley Junior
I still have hope you’re gonna catch on here eventually:
“Earlier in the day, Trump held a conference call with the country’s governors to preview the guidelines. Trump said it was essentially up to them to lift their stay-at-home orders but encouraged them to do so if they saw no apparent health risk, a move that contradicted his previous claim of “total authority” to decide if and when a state should reopen. Likewise the new guidelines largely defer to governors to decide when to move to each phase.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/trump-coronavirus-reopening-us-economy-guidelines-governors
Do I need to explain to the PhD what “defer to” means?? Just let me know.
Wow, Moses, you are seriously out of it (and, no, I am not opening your links, which seem to have nothing to do with the immediate issue at hand). The issue at hand, at least tho one I have commented on repeatedly in this thread, is that the original set of 7 people Fox reported were the “Council to Reopen America’ that Menzie linked to at the beginning of this thread was not in fact that council, and that indeed it seems there really is no such council, although Trump has in gearing up to announce his “guidelines” that lack testing he has thrown out up to 200 names of people and groups supposedly supporting him, with some of them saying they do not, especially with no fed support for widespread testing, aside from a bit of rhetoric.
While I did not wish to crow about it, it seems that all here have basically accepted that the point I made that we are here immediately following, and that you ridiculed for reasons that still remain entirely unclear, was correct. I was the first person here to point out that the list of 7 was not indeed that Council, and now everybody here seems to have agreed that they wera and are not, and have moved on.
But for some reason you wish to make some point here that clearly has not a thing to do with that. Are you actually denying that i was right that the listed set of 7 people above are not in the end the “Council to Reopen America”? If you are, then you have really gone off the deep end from too much stay-at-home. If not, well, you are just indulging in making a bunch of snarky remarks about utterly irrelevant things, that I said nothing at all about here. Which is it: you are being nuts or just irrelevant?
“They do goof up sometimes.”
Sometimes? You mean like when Chris Wallace actually reports real news. Even for him and a couple of other folks who never read the Roger Ailes playbook, there has never been a reporter on that network that I would trust to take the trash out.
Sometimes?
The swirling confusion could just be more commotion from the administration. They are good at screwing things up, but when it comes time to actually accomplish anything, they seem to make about a dozen false starts, screw it up worse, and then claim to have solved a problem that shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place.
Only issue now is that they can’t just declare victory and preen. So, expect lots more confusion and false starts.
I think it might be a case of Fox Noise getting it wrong. Shocking. Hard to believe Fox would screw-up. And speaking of screw-ups, how about Kellyanne Conway explain to clueless Fox viewers that the reason it’s called COVID-19 is because there were 18 previous outbreaks of COVID. I’m serious:
But there’s another reason, some of the scientists and doctors say that there could be other strains later on. This could come back in the fall in a limited way. This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks. You would think that people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that. This is just a pause right now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/politics/kellyanne-conway-covid-19-coronavirus/index.html
Kelly Anne is even dumber than she is obnoxious. The funny thing was how the trio of idiots who host Fox and Friends just nodded their heads when she said this. Their collective IQs are on the same par as her IQ – averaging some like 13.
I really feel bad when I read as contrast program the list of scientific advisers, members of the Leopoldina (National Academy of Science), of the German Government:
• Prof. Dr. Dirk Brockmann, Institut für Theoretische Biologie, Humboldt-Universität Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Horst Dreier, Lehrstuhl für Rechtsphilosophie, Staats- und Verwaltungsrecht, Universität Würzburg
• Prof. Dr. Lars Feld, Walter Eucken Institut und Universität Freiburg im Breisgau
• Prof. Dr. Klaus Fiedler, Psychologisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg
• Prof. Dr. Bärbel Friedrich, ehem. Vizepräsidentin der Leopoldina, Mikrobiologie, Humboldt-Universität Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Clemens Fuest, Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München
• Prof. Dr. Peter Gumbsch, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie und Fraunhofer-Institut für Werkstoffmechanik IWM,
Freiburg
• Prof. Dr. Marcus Hasselhorn, DIPF | Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation, Frankfurt a.M.
• Prof. Dr. Gerald Haug, Präsident der Leopoldina, Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, Mainz
• Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kocka, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Olaf Köller, Leibniz-Institut für die Pädagogik der Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik, Kiel
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Krieg, Vizepräsident der Leopoldina, Medizinische Fakultät, Universität Köln
• Prof. Dr. Heyo Kroemer, Vorstandsvorsitzender der Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Lengauer, Mitglied des Präsidiums der Leopoldina, Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken
• Prof. Dr. Jürgen Margraf, Fakultät für Psychologie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• Prof. Dr. Christoph Markschies, Theologische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Marquardt, Vorstandsvorsitzender Forschungszentrum Jülich in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft
• Prof. Dr. Karl Ulrich Mayer, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Reinhard Merkel, Seminar für Rechtsphilosophie, Universität Hamburg
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Mettenleiter, Präsident des Friedrich-Loeffler-Instituts, Greifswald-Insel Riems
• Prof. Dr. Armin Nassehi, Institut für Soziologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Prenzel, Zentrum für Lehrer*innenbildung, Universität Wien
• Prof. Dr. Jürgen Renn, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Frank Rösler, Mitglied des Präsidiums der Leopoldina, Institut für Psychologie, Universität Hamburg
• Prof. Dr. Robert Schlögl, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin
• Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiesemann, Institut für Ethik und Geschichte der Medizin, Universitätsmedizin Göttingen
Redaktionsgruppe:
• Dr. Christian Anton, Abteilung Wissenschaft-Politik-Gesellschaft der Leopoldina
I hear Biden is collecting a group of scientists to advice him. I would love to see that list.
OK, I’m trying to cut back or near eliminate the YT links, but you gotta loosen my leash on this one Menzie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w26UdPeTgx4
Apparently James Hoffa is making news here on this Re-Open Council. I think I’ve proven my lefty credentials on this blog pretty well, (with the possible exception of gender issues). If Democrats don’t know James Hoffa—they deserve all the attacks from Republicans (who probably didn’t know either until they googled it) that they get. The guy was in the news at least by the early ’90s. If James is smart he’ll refuse to be on the council, but in today’s world one never knows.
There is a story in the New York Times about this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-reopening-council.html They have been pretty good about getting things correct. I’ll let other comment on the listed individuals.
The Treasury has already said that it may take them up to 20 weeks to mail out the stimulus checks at a rate of 5 million per week.
Now, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has announced that they have to delay to reprogram the check computers to print Donald Trump’s signature on the lower left in the memo section for no particular reason. The checks will still have the authorized signature on the right as usual by Vona Robinson from the Bureau of Fiscal Services, so Trump’s signature on the left is entirely extraneous except to turn checks into campaign mailers.
Mnuchin was Trump’s campaign treasury secretary in 2016. He’s just continuing the job but with taxpayer money now. All government money belongs to Trump to spend as he sees fit for his re-election as we saw with the Ukraine funds.
Does Trump’s name on the check make its market value a fraction of its face value. If I were a bank, I refuse to honor a check that Trump signed.
Yep. That $1200 will be worth half that as soon as the king of bankruptcy signs it.
Think it’s typical Trump madness that he expects the postal service that he continually excoriates and refuses to bailout to deliver those checks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/11/post-office-bailout-trump/
I have only a BA in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I have a JD from a poorly ranked, but ABA accredited, law school. In the past 31 years I have hired, fired, and cross-examined economists (micro). I have read this blog for years to keep myself educated in economic thought. In particular I enjoy the information and insights of Professors Chin and Hamilton. I often enjoy the economic criticisms by other contributors. However, this blog has devolved. Instead of discussing economics, politics seems to the focused topic. Do any of the snarky commentators have PhDs in PoliSci? From the condescending comments about bachelors degrees, I would think that consistency would counsel a lack of expertise sufficient to provide expert opinion on political analysis.
I am not a Trump defender. I believe the the proposition that he is, at best, an irrational actor is not debatable. But, the world is facing an economic contraction of historical proportions. The IMF estimates a 6 percent decline is US GDP. It ASSUMES the US will start recovering in the second half of this year. Governor Newsome has made it clear that California will not reopen until September, if then. By then a Chamber of Commerce estimated 40% of SMEs will be out of business. Job destruction, idle capital, strain on finance threaten the US and every other country. Covid 19 will mutate an re-emerge like viruses do. (The flu season each year is a strand of the same flu which caused the pandemic of 1918). That is likely even if an effective vaccine is widely distributed within one year. Neither the US, nor Europe have deployed stimulus packages with any promise of effectiveness from the analyses I have seen. So in the face of a public health disaster, which will necessarily cause economic decimation, great minds are engaged in discussing what a dimwit Trump is.
How about acting like economists: Assume Trump is an idiot. Got any ideas about what can be done to fix the economic problem?
B.A. Badger: When listing credentials (as accurately I can) constitutes being snarky, it is a world different than I am accustomed to. I honestly believe that when I graduated with an A.B. in Economics (magna), I really did not understand well macro, despite having Duesenberry, Ben Friedman, Jeffrey Sachs as teachers. So having my fate in the hands of these folks and *not a single public health expert* makes me anxious, as I think it should any right-thinking person.
How to proceed? My advice – conditional on Trump, and non-implementation of the 25th Amendment, then the states have to work *around* the Federal government as best they can. Governors seem to have come to this same conclusion.
When Trump put Pence on the team, I was hoping Trump would get out of the way and let Pence lead. Mind you I’m no fan of Pence but even he could do better than the Toddler in Chief.
I have tried to be honest about myself. I have always stated that I only have my bachelors from a small state school. I know that doesn’t “bowl people over”. At the same time, well less than half of the general population has a 4-year accredited university degree, so I am proud of that (although I am sure my Dad, as a man with his Masters in Education, was sorely disappointed in me). I suppose I could walk around with an inferiority complex, thinking of my father’s thoughts of me, and the fact I could never measure up to my sister (despite her having lower grades than me) because she qualified as a “gifted” student in grade school and high school. I try to educate myself as best I can through reading, travel, etc. and call it a day at that.
Having said all of the above, there are certain jobs and “positions” which require a Masters and even, yes, sometimes a PhD. I take ZERO offense to Menzie bringing up this issue, and stressing that we as voters and citizens should ask for the best credentials we can get, from people making life and death decisions or economic calls which effect “the masses” (i.e. millions). And as lacking as I may be in my secondary education, I hope, near insist, Menzie keeps calling for that from our officials. Knowledge and degrees are things to be attained for and admired, no matter that the folks on Fox News and some dope in Yates Center Kansas would have us believe otherwise.
When I graduated from UW with a BA in economics, I did not believe I was truly qualified to run a $30 million power plant. But, that was my job and I was told I did it well. I was not an engineer, but I had access to engineers. A team consisting of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the White House Chief of Staff indicates to me that the “council” would be supplying political, managerial, and administrative advice. That council would advise on how to get things done rather than to provide macroeconomic analysis. Each of those people have access to teams of PhD economists. Whether they listen or not is a different issue. A woman I admire greatly obtained only a BA degree with some graduate course work in public administration. She became the Executive Director of the Federal Trade Commission. She managed the Commission for many years. She had over thirty economics PhD’s working for her (among others with advanced degrees). Her ability to manage economists, lawyers, administrative law judges, as well as the politics of doubling the Commission’s budget was not hampered by her lack of an advanced degree. Skill and diligence matter more.
In my experience a person’s obtaining or lack of an advanced degree does not correlate with his or her ability to achieve an objective (unless they are barriers to entry such as licensure). I apologize for characterizing the observation as “snarky.” However, I am ignorant about what function this council is actually supposed to perform, if any. The president’s description is at best vague. If their job is to try to get McConnell, Pelosi, and various departments to coordinate their efforts, then their education is less important than their ability to mediate. A politician in trouble convenes a panel–so what? I still believe that the problem with the council is not their lack of advanced degrees in economics. But, if I offended you, I am sorry.
B.A. Badger: I agree credentials are not everything. However, most of these individuals have demonstrated an unwillingness to take advice from experts (aside from Mnuchin, in my view). I would be willing to accept their competence for their posts were they willing to take advice. Tim Geithner had no advanced degree in economics, no Ph.D., but did a great job, partly because he surrounded himself with, and delegated to, experts (some of whom I worked with).
On the other side, Stephen Moore has a Masters in economics, but he is so morally compromised I wouldn’t trust him to spit.
B.A.Badger Personally, I think it’s entirely possible for someone without an advanced degree in economics to make a meaningful contribution to an economic roundtable group. Just because someone has a PhD in economics does not mean that person has what it takes for that kind of job. The ideal candidate would be someone with a lot of cross-disciplinary chops. The problem with Trump’s “Magnificent Seven” (at least as reported by Fox News) is that they are all grifters. You don’t need to have a PhD in PoliSci to understand Trump. A better background would be psychoanalysis. And I don’t mean that in a snarky way. Even when he was a child Trump’s parents knew that he was a sociopath. That’s why they gave up and packed him off to military school. It’s why his father arranged his will the way he did because he was very concerned that Donald would try and steal from his siblings…and according to the NYTs that’s exactly what Trump tried to do.
This economic crisis isn’t just your ordinary garden variety aggregate demand slump. If it were, the prescription would be fairly straightforward. Interest rates are rock bottom, so crank up government spending to whatever it takes. We need to do that, but it’s not sufficient because this isn’t just an aggregate demand problem. And we can’t rely upon prices to signal how production should be allocated because the price transmission mechanism is broken. That’s a problem for economists because almost all macro models rely upon price signals. So what’s a policy analyst to do? How do we fix the aggregate supply side when we can’t rely upon price signals? Here’s where we need to dust off those old Leontief I/O models. A million years ago I took an advanced course on Soviet economics, which was a giant exercise in matrix algebra. Until we get some kind of reliable therapeutic or vaccine we need to resign ourselves to forgetting about economic growth targets and focus on just muddling through. For the next year or so we’ll need to produce and distribute essential goods and services via a centrally planned economy. That’s a tough pill to swallow for most macroeconomists, but it’s pretty much what you’re left with when you don’t have meaningful markets with reliable price signals alongside highly inelastic production functions.
BAB,
As a fellw Badger who got a BA from there (and also more advanced degrees) quite awhile before your time, I shall note that once upon a time something called “political economy” was taught there. But I understand that stopped being done somewhere along the line, perhaps prior to your arrival in Madison.
Heck, BAB, not sure yo uever saw it, but the famous “sifting and winnowing” plaque on Bascom Hall was ultimately inspired by a political economy controversy at UW way back when. If you know what I am talking about, then a Numen Lumen to you, :-).
BTW, the latest out of the talking heads this evening on TV is that the list of people on this still undetermined Council may be as high as 200, with again apparently the goal to get as many people on board so as to browbeat all those snarky governors who are resisting totally reopening on May 1 into doing so, as well as to provide scapegoats in case the quick reopening ends up being a flop. It also seems that indeed those family members who were on Fox and Menzie’s “Magnificent Seven” may now be back on to this list of 200. But, hey, with 200 you can have pretty much anybody on.
The latest has it that Ivanka is on it but Jared is not. However, lots of the execs supposedly gave Trump money, but at least one of these CEOs is claiming that they put his name on it without his permission. And while the Chamber of Commerce has put forward a reopening plan Trump is citing, they are warning that a reopening without proper testing available should not be done, and Trump is if anything reducing funding and support for testing rather than expanding it.
Not putting up my YT link. Hmmmmph!!!!! Big meanie.
Curious people’s thoughts on this. Random thoughts or otherwise:
https://twitter.com/ukigoni/status/1250772914019893249
https://twitter.com/PES_PSE/status/1250722755647090688
Remember, when donald trump and Republicans tell you that it’s ok when your older relatives and friends die because of transmission of COVID-19, they’re not talking about their elderly relatives or their elderly close friends, they’re talking about your elderly close relatives and friends. They can insulate themselves in their little playworlds, you can’t. And that’s all they care about.