Stop Pulling the Wagon

When I was a kid we called it a “Do Over”. In computer language it is called a “System Restore Point or Date” and in Golf it is called a “Mulligan”. Go back in time and start over. Wish we could do this with the Coronavirus Covid-19.

Back on March 31, after two weeks of sheltering in place, my wife predicted, and I posted on Facebook, “With all this forced family “shut in” time, in the coming weeks and months we should expect an increase in the divorce rate, homicide rate and a bit later perhaps the birth rate”. To which a friend commented. “not to mention suicide rate”.

As we come out of forced “Stay at home” requirements and begin to try to rebuild our lives, our jobs and our economy, which is now in tatters, I think we can unfortunately look forward to several challenges. The following is not meant to frighten anyone, it is easier to deal with things if you anticipate them and see them coming.

One: A Tsunami of Bankruptcies. Personal, business, even government on a City, County and perhaps a State basis. The Federal Government can’t go bankrupt – they just print more paper money.

I read and heard many months ago that a very large percentage (over 50%) of the American working public could not raise $400 for a car repair without using a credit card or taking out a loan. During this Covid-19 time, and in an effort to help, the Government sent out stimulus checks but these do not begin to cover the average monthly bills of most families and doubtless many have had to resort to credit cards to “make ends meet”. After 6-8 or more weeks of no paychecks many of these folks may have little choice but to seek relief in the Bankruptcy Courts. The same can be said for many businesses, large and small, as well as many Cities, Counties and States that depend on regular sales tax and other revenues.

I would expect the Federal Government will provide some level of help to these Cities, Counties and States with more deficit dollars but probably not to the level many will “demand”.

The City of Chicago for example has reportedly said they need more than 40 Billion Dollars from the Federal Government. In the case of Chicago it must be remembered that it has a history of poor management and was near Bankruptcy before the Coronavirus Covid-19 Pandemic. In the news: a Chicago City Employee – an Administrator in Chicago’s failing Public School System whose annual salary was $400,000 a year – the same as our Presidents salary – recently retired with a $300,000 a year lifetime retirement benefit. Plus, of course, healthcare for the rest of her life, all paid for by the taxpayers of Chicago.

Of course there are many well run municipalities who have faced significant loss of tax and other revenue from forced business closures through no fault of their own. They are following, you might say are victims of State and Federal mandates.

Two: Covid-19 could be viewed as the “Trial Lawyers Full Employment Act”. Expect a “pandemic” of lawsuits from ravenous Trial Lawyers. Sharks always smell blood in the water and Hundreds of Billions of Federal Dollars are not going to go unnoticed. Lawsuits will be filed for any and all “opportunities” and you can expect them to go on for years. Litigation for things like “unlawful terminations” by employers, “illegal” repossessions under duress, wrongful evictions for non payment of mortgages and rent, Unconstitutional Bill of Rights denial of freedom and “imprisonment” at home by overzealous Governors and other State and Federal Authorities, and any other kind of reason or excuse they can dig up to enrich themselves. Sharks are Sharks, they have no soul.

Three: Homelessness. Expect it to increase. Especially if a large number of businesses fail and are forced into closure or Bankruptcy. Hopefully in time most jobs will come back but the coming months will likely be tough.

We all, family, friends and neighbors need to do whatever we can to help one another through the difficulties that will arise as we work to recover our lives and economy.

Too bad the “Mulligan” isn’t a possibility.

Bob Bandy – May 2020

Our leaders, both Democratic & Republican, were forced to make some difficult choices in dealing with the Coronavirus – COVID19. I don’t envy them having to make the decisions they were forced to make. Rather than criticize them, I think we should try to understand and support them as much as possible.

Having said that, we need to recognize that in deciding to virtually shut down our economy and require a major portion of our citizenry to submit to a form of “house arrest”, some realities must be accepted.

The purpose of what government is doing is to keep this pandemic from overwhelming our Health Care System, especially in our densely packed large inner cities. A worthy consideration. It is not to “make the virus go away”. “Sheltering in place” in our homes does not defeat the virus, it merely keeps it at bay, like a wolf at the door, so the virus and the pain can be spread over a longer period of time. Sort of like “death by a thousand cuts” if you will.

Once we are allowed to leave the sanctuary of our homes the Coronavirus will still be waiting for us in the real world. We are told that a Vaccine is at least months and maybe a year away.

Many of our leaders and most of the experts seem to be telling us that once we can again leave our homes and return to work, we should be prepared for perhaps permanent changes in our lives. All for our own good of course.

For one thing, I heard on the news a couple of days ago that “they” have developed a (self?) test for the virus at a cost of $120.00 per test. Pretty clearly if we take the test and it shows we have the virus, we will need to “self quarantine” ourselves for 14 days and contact anybody we have had contact with so that they can test and do likewise. What was not said was if the test is negative, how often will we need to re-test. Maybe every time we make an “essential” trip for groceries or go to the pharmacy?

WHERE FUN GOES TO DIE

Many/most of those in charge are telling us the virus will be with us for a long time and flare ups in the fall or maybe this winter or next spring are possible and maybe likely, especially if the virus were to mutate (as virus’s are prone to do) and we should be prepared to again implement and redo what we are going through now. A scary thought!

Beyond testing and the likelyhood that social distancing and masks are likely to become a permanent fixture in our lives, how about:

The impact on Movie Theaters, Sports Arenas and Ball Parks, Theme Parks like Disneyland, Concerts, State and County Fairs, Trade Shows etc. – most any event that brings lots of folks close together.

Getting to work or shopping in a high density city like New York where so much “people moving” is dependent on commuter trains, subways, buses and street foot traffic. How do you maintain social distancing on a jam packed subway system that is frequently making quick stops while passengers are pushing and shoving to get on and off?

Schools, including classrooms and gymnasiums. How do you keep students, especially younger ones at “social distance” from each other? Won’t classrooms have to increase in size to keep desks farther apart?

How does government recapture lost revenue from sporting and other events? Sacramento “went out on a limb” to develop an Arena for a major Basketball Team. The city counted on repaying that investment from taxes on ticket sales, parking fees, hotel and restaurant taxes etc. If you cut the arena seating by 2/3 to accommodate social spacing, do you triple the price of tickets? Is it possible fans will lose some interest? Isn’t part of the fun of attending a game “live” the excitement of the crowd and being able to elbow your friends and saying “Did you see that shot?”

I am almost ashamed to admit that there is a part of me that thinks we should do whatever it takes to provide a safe environment for those at greatest risk in our society, while giving even those folks an “opt out” if they so choose, and then let the rest of us go on about living our lives the way we are used to doing it. The “Experts” statistics show us so far, that if we do get the virus, for some folks it is a non-event, for others it is more of an event but in the end the fatality rate is somewhere between 1%-3% and less than that among the “not at risk” portion of the population. Even among the elderly the risk is greatest among those with underlying health factors. For most of us the risk seems to be in the .5 (one half of one) percent range.

Keep in mind that I, like most everyone else, do not want anyone to die but it seems logical to me we could find a way to protect the most vulnerable without making virtual prisoners out of the rest of us and destroying our economy in the process.

I think I can with a clear conscience offer this opinion because I am one of those considered at risk and I, for myself would choose the “opt out”, take my chances and live my life, using my common sense, the way we were living it before this Coronavirus upended everything.

I am one who chooses facing my foe in the open arena where there is often some real or perceived element of danger, to living my life in the supposed safety of a cage with dependence on government as a companion.

You are free to disagree with me. If you agree, you are also free to share this with someone.

Bob Bandy – April 2020

I spent more than 17 years, and quasi-retired from a company that was in the computer data processing and billing business as well as systems design and fabrication.

My own positions were in administration and management and not technical “stuff” but I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours with technical people including programmers and engineers.

I remember one technical manager in particular that used to “remind” me over and over that everyone seems to think “Computers are smart but actually they are stupid – they can just process data very, very fast.”

Or, as was often mentioned as a “great truth” by countless programmers and technicians that we must never forget: “Garbage In – Garbage Out”. Computer systems can only produce results based on the the data that is input into them. In other words, if you provide the computer program with incomplete or inaccurate data they will produce faulty or misleading results.

For example, early in the current Coronavirus Pandemic, “modeling” was predicting United States potential fatalities from the virus could run 2.2 million by August of this year, this was later revised to 1.4 million and still later to maybe 140 thousand and it now appears the actual number with likely come in well below that number. That is a huge differential in predictions and is why the task force kept reiterating that they needed accurate data for “modeling”.

These experts are not stupid or inept, these are educated, intelligent and dedicated people. Apparently the first “models” were based on input data that nothing would be done to mitigate the spread of the virus. As mitigation factors were input, the modeling predictions changed.

(Definition of mitigate: Spreading the impact of possible contamination over a longer period of time to avoid overwhelming hospitals by social distancing, closing of non-essential businesses and instituting modified house arrest for citizenry.)

My real fear of relying on computer modeling is that it can, and has been abused by those with an agenda to make “junk science” predictions on subjects from global famine to global freezing to climate change prognostications that have a history of causing unnecessary fear and panic only to be ultimately proven false.

By “picking and choosing” what data fits your agenda and you want to use in your computer modeling, you can skew the computer output to fit your goals. This is not true science, it is an example of “Garbage in – Garbage out”.

Politicians use Pollsters to do something similar by carefully wording questions and then polling segments of the population likely to produce their desired results. “Garbage in – Garbage out”.

In 1966 former Vice President Al Gore’s “modeling” and his book (An Inconvenient Truth) predicted global warming unless immediate and drastic action was taken within a decade. He predicted, among other things, rising sea levels and worldwide massive flooding along with Polar Bear Extinction (Polar Bear populations have actually increased) and the South Sahara drying up among other dire warnings. None of these things happened. Despite his predictions of rising sea levels, the former Vice President and author bought himself a beachfront home.

In his book “The Population Bomb”, by Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, his modeling predicted worldwide famine in the 70’s and 80’s due to overpopulation. The worldwide famine never occurred but caused near panic in many quarters of academia.

In the 1970’s more “modeling” led scientists to predict an imminent new “ice age”, a vision of which can be seen in the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow” which was based on this prediction. It never happened.

More recently, a “Progressive Green New Deal” movement within our own country predicted, based on their own accepted “modeling” in 2019 that our planet only had 12 years left for human survival unless we immediately adopt their agenda, part of which is to abruptly abandon all use of “fossil” fuels (oil and natural gas) and switch to only solar and wind power on a crisis basis. This is “junk” science on steroids but they have caused tremendous fear and panic, especially on our young and vulnerable. In my opinion this is fear mongering on a criminal level. The climate is not going to make the earth uninhabitable by humans within the next, now 11 years and there is no definitive scientific proof to the fact. Only predictions based on computer “modeling” from often skewed, cherry picked questionable data.

You will forgive me if I do not trust “modeling”. Good people can be led far from the truth by inaccurate, faulty or fraudulent data. There are too many “experts” out there with an agenda looking for a way to further that agenda with “modeling” data.

To close on a more humorous note. Many of these experts are telling us that we will need to permanently change our behavior in the future and practice social distancing everywhere and at every age. I want to be a “fly on the wall” of a third grade classroom and watch all the the 8-9 year old’s maintain, at all times, a six foot spacing in the classroom, cafeteria and playground. I pity the teachers!

Bob Bandy – April 2020

I must confess, like many others I have come to fear a possible intentional viral attack from one of America’s enemies similar to the apparently unintentional infestation we have suffered from the Coronavirus COVID-19.

An adversary would not have to have its army invade, drop a bomb or even fire a single shot. In the future an enemy would simply have to acquire or mutate a virus (virus’s mutate easily), especially one that is contagious and attacks the upper respiratory system.

They could then infect “volunteers” with the virus, infiltrate them through our porous borders, especially into Sanctuary Cities and States, where no questions or paperwork is required.

Once here, these infiltrators could travel cross country by bus or in caravans of rental cars to major centers of population where folks are often in close contact with each other and then make sure they sneeze or cough on as many of our citizens as possible. Then, let nature do its part. In this way an enemy could again bring America to its economic knees. A scary thought.

For now our Government has imposed a well intended sort of “house arrest” that has left most of us to watch 24/7 marathon tabloid television “news” of the Coronavirus infestation and the crash of our economy.

Mostly unspoken, but hanging like a cloud is the likely eventual inflation and devaluation of our currency through multi-Trillion Dollar bailouts with fiat paper money. Our Government has little option to do anything else. The economy must be enabled to function again.

On a more positive note, I recently remembered something from past readings that is perhaps our Country’s best defense. I did a bit of research and found several varieties of the phrase I was looking for. Perhaps the following is the simplest and comes right to the point.

On December 13, 1955 a British Consul stated, in part: “Economically speaking, every time America sneezes, the rest of the world has pneumonia”.

The United States is the undisputed leader in the worlds economy. The U.S. Dollar is the standard currency. Not the Chinese Yuan, not the Euro, not the Yen, not the Rouble or any other currency.

Without the stabilizing influence of the U.S. market and dollar, the Chinese and many other economies would suffer greatly and perhaps even collapse leading the world into an economic and collateral social pandemic. Even before the current crisis, there were many governments in the world that were on the ragged edge of economic bankruptcy. The U.S. has been a leader in helping keep them financially viable at even a minimal level.

Aside from a few “lunatic fringe governments” and radical groups like ISIS and their ilk, that would like to hurt us just because they hate us, what government would seriously consider “crashing” the U.S. economy? For virtually all of them, it would be a form of “economic suicide” to attack us. I think this makes such an attack much less likely.

I believe a strong, robust U.S. economy is America’s best defense against an intentional viral Pandemic by a foreign enemy.

Something to think about.

Bob Bandy – April 2020

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted virtually everyone’s life, some in more ways than others, but all of us.

In one positive way I am reminded of the period following the attack on 9-11-01.

If any good came from the terror and tragedy of that horrible day it was that we experienced a coming together in America that was unique in my adult lifetime.

In the face of a common enemy we found a common purpose and good.

We united as a nation, as a people and as Americans. Color did not matter. Social standing lost it’s importance. Politics was forgotten – at least for a time. Neighbors joined with neighbors. There was an air of courtesy and acceptance of each other despite whatever differences we might of had before the event.

As Americans we joined hands and hearts in sorrow and in pride and celebrated our common love of country and each other.

In a similar way I have sensed some measure of that time in the current test being presented by a different adversary – this Coranavirus COVID-19.

Despite the shortages at our local supermarkets and the need, even requirement for social distancing, I am noticing more courtesy, patience and even friendly smiles among shoppers.

For the most part, we as individuals, seem to have put political disagreement and name calling on the shelf, at least for now. Many national political leaders who are generally bitter foes have demonstrated a softening of tone and been able to co-operate for the general benefit of all . Even if temporary, it’s a relief from the seeming constant drumbeat of political infighting we have come to expect. A welcome relief with perhaps just a glimmer of hope for the future.

In our area we have our own social Neighborhood Network where we communicate and share with folks in our immediate area. (I am told the Nextdoor.com app is available nationwide). What I am seeing happen makes me proud and has strengthened my faith in others. I see postings offering help to those in need. Offers to run an errand for a shut-in, help with a chore, shopping, even a package of toilet paper at a time when the stores are all completely out.

I don’t see people offering to help if you are a fellow Democrat or a fellow Republican or a fellow whatever. Just neighbors willing to help neighbors without conditions. It is a wonderful thing and makes me proud to be one of those neighbors.

This Virus “thing” shows no favorites and my greatest wish is that we could all carry on indefinitely this common goodwill feeling after this virus is finally controlled or better, history.

If you have the same desire, please share that feeling with others. I believe we would all be richer as a people if we did so.

Bob Bandy – April 2020

Listening to the radio the other day while I was working, I heard a purported spokesperson for California Government claim that the “Administration” came to the conclusion that our recent Proposition 13 (proposed property tax increase) Bill failed in our Primary Election last month because California voters figured that since the State had a balanced budget, even a budget surplus, the voters felt no further tax increase was needed to assist the States Schools.

Balanced budget? Surplus? California plays a “Shell Game” with tax revenues. Read on.

Choking back a “gag reflex” I remembered all the enraged voters of both parties who felt totally betrayed by previous Gasoline Tax Increases (California has the highest gasoline taxes in the nation) which had been presented by our State Government as a tax that was promised to be used only to repair our roads and not for any other purpose. “Pinky Swear Promise”.

” Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law billions of dollars in higher fuel taxes and vehicle fees, the state will have an estimated $52 billion more money to help cover the state’s transportation needs for the next decade.” Sacramento Bee April 28, 2017

According to published reports California consumes about 43,835,616 gallons of gasoline a day and each gallon is taxed by the State of California at a rate of 46.7 cents a gallon. Using a calculator this would give California a daily gasoline tax income of $20,471,232. That’s over twenty million dollars each and every day, over six hundred million dollars a month in gas tax income. source: Sacramento Bee and multiple online federal and state agency reports.

It did not take California long to play the old “Hide the Pea in the Shell Con Game” before they “redirected” (stole) much/most of the tax increase to other “pet projects” like Climate Change research. In the meantime our roads are among the poorest in the nation with potholes shaking our cars to pieces.

To say that California has a Balanced Budget with a substantial Budget Surplus is a lie of the worst sort concocted out of “smoke and mirrors” accounting. Or if you prefer: Creative Accounting 101.

California has a 1.5 Trillion Dollar State and local debt, …..much of it in UNFUNDED (my emphasis) Pension Liability. January 2019 California Policy Center.org

Private employers are required by Federal Law – ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act) – to have fully funded (money in the bank) employee retirement programs.

The State of California, like the Social Security Administration, uses the Ponzi Scheme method of depending on future revenues – use hoped for future suckers money to pay the previous suckers “ala Bernie Madoff” plan – to cover the previously collected (and spent) “trust account” money through Shell Game tax increases and “reallocation” from other programs.

Regular readers of my columns, and those that note my brief biographical data in the right margin will remember that: I am against racism in any of its forms, oppose violence, abhor hypocrisy and especially despise being lied to.

Government please stop the “Pea Shell Shuffling” and quit lying to us.

Bob Bandy – March 2020