Political Discussion

Jan said:
www.theguardian.com

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

The president was aware of the danger from the coronavirus – but a lack of leadership has created an emergency of epic proportions
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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This:

“The US response will be studied for generations as a textbook example of a disastrous, failed effort,” Ron Klain, who spearheaded the fight against Ebola in 2014, told a Georgetown university panel recently. “What’s happened in Washington has been a fiasco of incredible proportions.”

Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the US government’s response to international disasters at USAid from 2013 to 2017, frames the past six weeks in strikingly similar terms. He told the Guardian: “We are witnessing in the United States one of the greatest failures of basic governance and basic leadership in modern times.”
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One of the things I picked up in the above article is a lot of it has to do with ideology.

Republican governors believe stay wide stay at home orders to be wildly inappropriate and government being too intrusive.

Missouri's governor believes that "it is going to be personal responsibility" that wins the struggle against the virus. Texas governor says "In times such as these, you always have experts who believe they know best for everybody, You have some folks who think that government ought to take over everything in times of crisis — that they, as government officials, know better than individual citizens."

Overall they feel that what might be the right call for large urban areas is not the right call for smaller counties with fewer cases at this time.


In other words, they believe it's the citizens personal decision whether or not they decide to stay home and practice social distancing. That for the most part is not always a decision. For many it's not a choice whether or not they have to go into work. In many red states even where jobs could allow for working at home, workers are expected to show up at the office. Working from home is not an option when the business has a conservative mindset. So it's life as usual for many people in red states.
 
Lee Newman said:
I mean we’ve been witnessing that for four years.
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The most amazing thing to me is that this was an opportunity for him to actually secure his re-election by just following the advice of the various expert scientific advisers.

We have our lot of populist premiers in Canada. Doug Ford in Ontario, for example, is pretty much a Trump-light and his popularity ratings here were in the tank. So bad they they moth-balled him during the federal elections so he wouldn't harm the federal conservatives.

But he's doing a pretty good job through this by following proper advice and I'm sure he's resurrecting his political career.

This was an opportunity for Trump to look like a hero across the aisle and he botched it so badly. It's mind boggling. Though as you say, not surprising given what he's shown the last few years.
 
Turbo said:
The most amazing thing to me is that this was an opportunity for him to actually secure his re-election by just following the advice of the various expert scientific advisers.

We have our lot of populist premiers in Canada. Doug Ford in Ontario, for example, is pretty much a Trump-light and his popularity ratings here were in the tank. So bad they they moth-balled him during the federal elections so he wouldn't harm the federal conservatives.

But he's doing a pretty good job through this by following proper advice and I'm sure he's resurrecting his political career.

This was an opportunity for Trump to look like a hero across the aisle and he botched it so badly. It's mind boggling. Though as you say, not surprising given what he's shown the last few years.
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He doesn't care . All he has done his whole life is fight with paper tigers.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Texas governor says "In times such as these, you always have experts who believe they know best for everybody, You have some folks who think that government ought to take over everything in times of crisis — that they, as government officials, know better than individual citizens."
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That's rich coming from the same state government trying to opportunistically ban abortions during the crisis.
 
dhodo said:
That's rich coming from the same state government trying to opportunistically ban abortions during the crisis.
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According to that article Texas has also been the most aggressive state when it comes to passing preemptive laws. Any ordinance blue cities pass they have been passing state laws to preempt them stating the laws should be uniform across the state. Yet, here we are with this crisis and it's suddenly okay for the blue cities to do their own thing, and these restrictions should not apply to the whole state. Let the local authorities have control. Texas has only been taking local authorities abilities away.

The most common of such preemptive laws have to do with minimum wage, sick leave, LGBT rights and gun control.

It really irks me that cities in red states that have higher cost of living compared to the rest of the state by more than double can't have a higher minimum wage. Republican state leaders can't have that.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
According to that article Texas has also been the most aggressive state when it comes to passing preemptive laws. Any ordinance blue cities pass they have been passing state laws to preempt them stating the laws should be uniform across the state. Yet, here we are with this crisis and it's suddenly okay for the blue cities to do their own thing, and these restrictions should not apply to the whole state. Let the local authorities have control. Texas has only been taking local authorities abilities away.

The most common of such preemptive laws have to do with minimum wage, sick leave, LGBT rights and gun control.

It really irks me that cities in red states that have higher cost of living compared to the rest of the state by more than double can't have a higher minimum wage. Republican state leaders can't have that.
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Yeah, I've been seeing some of that here too. Our three closest beaches all closed during the day, but the state attorney general said that only the governor can do that and have it stand up in court, so one of them folded and opened up for the weekend. Of course it was crowded. The other two stuck to their guns.

Yesterday he totally backpedalled and said that they won't be pursuing litigation against local governments and the Governor ordered all beaches closed. So that was good, but why did they have to screw it up for the weekend?
 
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