WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Thursday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- The charm and wonder of Donald Trump’s machinations to tarnish the presidency of Joe Biden took a decidedly darker turn Thursday as the president took a step that might become more than a footnote in political science texts or an episode of a Netflix political thriller. Trump invited the Republican members of the Michigan legislature to discuss his apparent plot to withhold some Electoral College votes from the president elect, part of a strategy to make him a former president elect. The backstory is tedious and so far leading to an only tentative long shot. The aim is to prevent the Board of Canvassers from sending Michigan’s votes next week to their final count. Biden seemed to already be losing patience with Trump’s reluctance to begin a transition to a successor, saying Trump will go down as “one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.” He added, “It’s hard to fathom how this man thinks.” Trump had already telephoned … again, the details are easily accessible and there’s more below. But the aim is historic, seemingly casting America in a league with Lebanon and other such fractious and unstable governments. The Electoral College votes in little more than three weeks.
- Perhaps more consequential in the near term is an experiment Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin embarked upon Thursday. The credit markets and lesser markets have all been in a state of operational quiescence and to the extent that is the successful consequence of a central bank’s assurances is impossible to measure. Mnuchin indicated he would like to find out by attempting to withdraw Treasury’s backstop funding to the Federal Reserve’s backstop 13-(3) programs, namely the PMCCF, SMCCF, MLF, MSLP, and the TALF. Now that that’s clear four other programs would get a 90-day extension. Some suggest that far from being random mischief, Mnuchin wants to specifically disable a program that could provide loans to state and local governments including those Democratic strongholds President Trump wants to exclude from any future pandemic relief legislation. In an uncommonly explicit disagreement with Treasury, the Fed communicated that it would “prefer” not to see the programs terminated. There were hints the Fed could drag its feet and hold the half trillion or so dollars involved hostage, leaving their fate up to the determining factor for the entire Biden presidency’s agenda, those two runoff Senate races in Georgia. Georgia’s recounted votes, incidentally, did not erode Biden’s lead. The Trump campaign could still request another recount done by machine.
- Speaking of the chances for pandemic relief, there was a shadow of a possibility raised Thursday that it could still happen. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said his Republican counterpart had, in fact, signaled he is now willing to talk about it. It was not exactly a sudden epiphany, heeding the warning of an oncoming tsunami of business failures, evictions and even longer food pantry lines yet it was at least a flutter of interest in saving lives with additional funds for testing and distribution of vaccines. The House of Representatives observed a moment of silence in honor of the 251,000 dead so far from the virus. And many senators got a progress report briefing from Operation Warp Speed. There is the matter of the congressional Thanksgiving week break already in progress that puts off anything important until after November 30. December will be a busy time on Capitol Hill regardless of any pandemic relief. The government will shut midnight Dec. 11 unless an omnibus budget bill is worked out. Many CARES Act provisions expire Dec. 31 along with some significant but temporary tax law provisions.
- Checking out Fox News, Laura Ingraham was telling her viewers Thursday night the fable of “The Phony Gatekeepers of Democracy.” Ferreting out hypocrisy in all its forms, as long as it’s practiced by Democrats, the story was, of course, about people who have come forward to testify to what they assume was voter fraud. Earlier Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said he had hundreds of such affidavits, one of which he could make public and that while he could not reveal the rest, they would be considered to be evidence in court review. Giuliani’s 90-minute news conference at which he offered many hypotheticals as to how a vast 10-state conspiracy with the help of Venezuelans and bogeyman George Soros stole the election met with some skepticism, remarkably among them three Fox News legal expert contributors, Andy McCarthy – trained by Giuliani, GOP consultant Karl Rove and Professor Jonathon Turley. The tick-tock of it all can be dialed back on the @macenewsmacro twitter account.
- Ingraham had as guests the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers mentioned above, Monica Palmer and Bill Hartmann, who told of being threatened after they first refused to certify the ballots, then under pressure from angry voters, flipped to certify, a supposedly final act. Since then they decided to return to their original position, for which they had been congratulated in a telephone call from the president. The next move is up in the air with a sizable block of Detroit-area votes the target. The president telephoned two county election functionaries? Another punctuation mark in the now unprecedented fight to overturn an election.
- On Friday, the White House has something on the official schedule for a change, a 6:50a ET video session with other heads of state of APEC nations. Also on the glorified Zoom call is China’s President Xi, the closest the two will ever be, apparently, if Biden takes over foreign policy. Asked about China earlier in the day, Biden said that country will be told to “play by the rules” in his administration.
- Back to the virus, for which the path ahead – exponential spread – is already set and beyond any reversing. What can be influenced from now on is how long the virus will be able to maintain its surge level rampage. Both ABC and NBC network newscasts Thursday evening took close looks at how the virus is especially painful for rural communities without easy access to intensive care unit facilities. The national daily death toll keeps rising, 1,923 in the latest 24-hour period (NYT Tracker).
- The White House Corona Virus Task Force held its first briefing in more than four months and its coordinator Deborah Birx and the NIAID’s Tony Fauci were once again behind the lectern. Most of it was a repeat of the Operation Warp Speed briefing earlier in the week and the main message was the same as always, wear masks, social distance, keep away from crowds. As more school systems followed New York City in closing the classrooms again, CDC Director Robert Redfield and Task Force chief Vice President Mike Pence repeated their own main message, that it is OK to keep schools open. Pence ended the session by ignoring questions of reporters.
- The reference in a recent ‘Status Check” to a “Gene Roddenberry type universe” prompted some readers to expand on that concept. That would be a world in which leadership competence would be valued more than leadership partisan cleverness. It would be a world where the liberal-conservative contention would be less important than the prioritization of substantial accomplishments in behalf of the common good. It would be a world where market imperatives would be ranked at least equal to human welfare. It would be a world where the economy benefited from long-range initiatives to improve productivity, investment and sustainability and short-range dead-end policy tangents would be automatically rejected. Coming someday to a Holodeck near you.
- Upcoming economic statistics are hard to find on Friday, with the exception of the 1:30p ET Baker-Hughes oil rig count. Thursday’s data highlight was the report on existing home sales, strong enough to provoke NAR economist Lawrence Yun to use the word “amazing,” and the weekly claims report worsened as Kevin Kastner details in a story elsewhere on this macenews.com site.
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- Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.