Trump Signs on the Dotted Line

For roughly a week, Donald Trump played yet another high-stakes round of chicken (along with many rounds of golf), refusing to sign the bill that keeps the government running ($1.4 trillion), and extends further COVID-19 relief funds ($900 billion). Nobody, even the members of his own party, seemed to understand exactly what he was trying to accomplish. Was he holding Congress' feet to the fire, in hopes of getting bigger and juicier checks for Americans that he could brag about on his way out the (White House) door? Or was he orchestrating a train wreck, so as to stick it to President-elect Joe Biden and/or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY, who had the temerity to admit that Biden won the election)? Whatever it was, the President seems to have changed his mind, as he signed the measure into law on Sunday night.

On one hand, Trump forestalled a number of unpleasant outcomes by finally getting out his pen and applying his John Hancock. In addition to avoiding a government shutdown, there will now be money to extend unemployment benefits for millions of people, as well as funds for schools, for small businesses, and for vaccinations. On the other hand, by dragging his feet in signing a bill that was negotiated by his administration (specifically, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin), the President created needless hardship for many people. Beyond the fact that millions of Americans got to spend their Christmas wondering if eviction and/or being broke was right around the corner, there will now be a gap in unemployment benefits, as those have already lapsed. The implementation of other programs will be delayed, at a time when time is of the essence.

As we try to figure out what exactly Trump was doing here, there are a few clues, though not many of them. First, he's angry about the outcome of the election, and has been increasingly erratic as his various desperate attempts to remain in office have failed. Second, he very nearly signed the bill on Christmas Eve, and then changed his mind at the last minute. Third, he really is unhappy with the bill, it would appear. Beyond his demand that the $600 payment to Americans earning less than $75,000 be increased to $2,000, he has also railed against all the pork in the bill. Before finally signing on Sunday, he said that he would "send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill." Needless to say, such a request is about as meaningless as an oral contract made with Donald Trump, and Congress will just ignore it. That's true even if the redlining is done with a big, red Sharpie pen.

Anyhow, given the facts at hand, there are three explanations for Trump's behavior that most readily suggest themselves. The first is that he thought he had leverage here, and that he could force Congress to change the bill, and when he discovered that "leverage" and "lame-duck president" rarely go together, he backed down. The second is that Trump really did intend to cripple the country and saddle Joe Biden with an unmanageable situation, but he chickened out at the end. If so, it would not be the first time the President pursued a scorched earth strategy and then pushed the eject button as the consequences became less abstract and more concrete. And the third explanation is that the Donald really is in the midst of some sort of psychological episode, and this incident pulled back the curtain on it.

Who knows which of these explanations, if any, is correct. Maybe we will eventually find out, and maybe we won't. The only thing that is certain is that more and more people, including many congressional Republicans, are counting the days until Jan. 20. Even if one disagrees with Joe Biden's politics, at least his behavior is reliable, and adheres to the norms of the presidency (and of adults in general). Better to have someone like that with their finger on the nuclear button than someone who appears to be in "tilt" mode. (Z)

House Will Vote on Upping the Checks to $2,000 Today

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is a religious person and has probably spent much of Christmas thanking God for Donald Trump's decision to demand that the stimulus checks be for $2,000 instead of $600. For several days, she has been planning to have the entire House vote on a simple bill to raise the amount to $2,000. As of last night, she was still planning to do so, but that could change as things develop. Still, it appears to be a win-win situation for her.

If the bill should somehow pass, people will get more money. While Trump will get some of the credit, she knows that a lot of people are hurting and so is willing to let him have a feather in his cap in order to help people. There is an old saying to that effect: "There is nothing you can't accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit for it." This is one of those times.

There is a fair chance it will pass the House because: (1) most Democrats will vote for it and (2) Republicans who fear Trump's wrath will also vote for it. It is very unlikely to pass the Senate because Mitch McConnell may not even bring it up for a vote.

The reason this is a gift to Pelosi is that it will force House Republicans, who are normally deficit hawks and who oppose most government spending except for defense, to take a tough vote. If they vote for the bill, they can be primaried in 2022 from the right as insufficiently hawkish on the deficit. Having an incumbent Republican face a nasty primary can only help the Democrat in the district. If they vote against the bill, Trump will call them RINOs and disown them. That may make Trumpish voters less likely to show up for them in 2022, especially if Democrats advertise Trump's "tweet of death" on OANN, Sinclair, Breitbart, and other places where Republicans (but not Democrats) are likely to see the ad. In any event, anything that drives a wedge through the middle of the Republican Party, and forces members to choose between the Dear Leader and any remaining principles they may have left, can't help the party.

Incidentally, the fact that Trump finally broke down and signed the bill providing for $600 payments has not changed Pelosi's plans. On Sunday night, she issued a statement that read: "Now, the president must immediately call on congressional Republicans to end their obstruction and to join him and Democrats in support of our stand-alone legislation to increase direct payment checks to $2,000, which will be brought to the floor tomorrow."

In addition to arguing over the $2,000 (a.k.a, an additional $1,400), Congress has to deal with Trump's veto last week of a bill that funds the Pentagon. It passed with enough votes to override a veto, but Republican members of Congress could change their minds. Again, it's between their stated principles (spending money on defense is good!) and Dear Leader. Normally the week after Christmas doesn't have any fireworks until New Year's Eve, but this year they could be coming early. (V & Z)

Putin Is Setting Biden's Foreign Policy

Joe Biden will have a lot on his plate come Jan. 20, so Russian President (now Dictator) Vladimir Putin, decided to help out by laying out Biden's foreign policy with respect to Russia, thus saving Biden the trouble of doing so.

Actually, Putin is changing his policies in two separate areas in preparation not only for a Biden presidency but also for parliamentary elections in Russia in 2021. On the domestic front, he is cracking down on anyone who might be a threat to him, especially journalists and bloggers. To him, they are all potential terrorists, extremists, or spies, and must be squashed like bugs. New laws move Russia from partial authoritarianism to the real thing. Putin can now arrest anyone as a foreign agent. Foreign websites, like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, can now be censored or banned. He is now closer to being a full-blown dictator than any Russian leader since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Under Russian law (recently changed at Putin's request), he can remain president until 2036, when he will be 84. Putin's heroes are the people who hacked the CIA. In fact, yesterday he went to a monument honoring the SVR, the intelligence agency probably responsible for the massive hack of the U.S. government, laid flowers there, and called its work extremely important.

But it is the foreign policy front that will affect Biden the most. Putin understands that Trump was ignorant and was pliable, the latter possibly exploited by dangling a vision of Trump Tower Moscow in front of him. Putin has no such illusions about Biden. Last week, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said U.S. relations are going "from bad to worse." There is no way on God's green earth that he would say that unless Putin had told him to say it. He also said that he didn't expect anything good from the Biden administration and that Russia would adopt a policy of "total deterrence" toward the U.S. with minimal dialog.

It's not just talk. Putin also talked of a "cosmic" rate of change in developing new weapons, including hypersonic missiles and other advanced military hardware. So, just in case Biden was planning to make nice to Russia, Putin has already foreclosed that option. The only choice left for Biden is to manage Cold War II. On the other hand, Biden was already leaning in that general direction, and had talked about punishing Russia for meddling in the 2016 election, poisoning opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and hacking the U.S. government. If Biden takes actual visible measures to hit back at Putin, the Russian leader will use them to campaign on in the parliamentary elections next year to make sure his party has a massive majority. Then the one potential power source that could challenge him will be muzzled. (V)

Biden Will Focus on Regulations

Since Vladimir Putin has already determined half of Joe Biden's foreign policy (the Russia part, but not the China part), Biden is focusing on something different: regulations. These are not sexy and don't get a lot of play in the news, but government rules have a huge effect on housing, the environment, and so much more. Donald Trump and his minions systematically gutted hundreds, maybe thousands, of government regulations put in place by past Democratic and Republican presidents. Many of them were designed to protect people from all kinds of predatory businesses. Absent these rules, a lot of people are at the mercy of forces more knowledgeable and powerful than themselves. Biden is going to make a major push to restore the regulations.

This is one of the reasons the President-elect is filling his cabinet with seasoned professionals who know the material well. Biden also knows that many of the rules can be restored either by an executive order from the president or by a rule promulgated by a cabinet secretary. In most cases, approval from Congress is not needed.

One of the old pros is Gina McCarthy, who formerly ran the EPA. She will be the domestic climate czar (unless Biden gets so angry with Putin that he bans the use of "czar," perhaps calling her the climate queen, climate pharaoh, or climate despot). She will coordinate the various departments as they try to undo the climate damage Trump did.

Another person who will be trying to undo Trump's effects on the planet as soon as possible is the soon-to-be head of the EPA, Michael Regan, who was the top environmental regulator in North Carolina and a veteran of the EPA in the Clinton and Bush administrations. He won't need any on-the-job training. The same is true of officials in many other policy areas.

One problem that Biden will have is that following all the rules takes time. Trump solved that problem by simply breaking the rules. If he didn't like some regulation or law, he just discarded it or ignored it, and didn't care whether doing that was legal or not. Biden doesn't really want to do that. It's not in his blood. (V)

Why Fox Loyalists Are Changing the Channel

Newsmax, a smaller news network that is much further to the right than Fox News, has grown spectacularly in the past 2 months, to Fox News' detriment. For example, Greg Kelly's 7 p.m. show on Newsmax has beaten Martha MacCallum's show on Fox on some days. That's not surprising, given that Kelly is up 486% since Nov. 9 and MacCallum is down 44%. In other time slots, Newsmax is also catching up to Fox. Why?

Interviews with former loyal Fox viewers give the answer. On Election Night, Fox called Arizona for Biden, which turned out was the right call. Some Fox viewers were irate. One angry viewer called it the "cherry on the cake." Then, on Nov. 7, Fox called the election for Biden. One couple said they felt "duped" and permanently switched to Newsmax, with the TV on from the time they get up until they go to bed. Another former Fox loyalist said Chris Wallace's performance as the moderator of the first debate was a red flag. Wallace tried (unsuccessfully) to make Trump obey the rules he had previously agreed to. A retired woman in Florida said she had detected a leftward drift in Fox coverage since late September. Some former viewers blamed Fox's new management for the network going soft. The reality (which Fox viewers are not interested in) is that one of Rupert Murdoch's sons, James, did endorse Joe Biden, but has had no management role in the company for well over a year and no role at all since the summer. Murdoch's other son, Lachlan, who now runs the company, is very conservative. Another viewer said that the problem is that Fox is pretending that nothing is wrong with the election process.

One issue that some switchers have noticed is that Newsmax lacks a lot of the glitz and polish of the very high-budget Fox shows. The network simply can't afford those bells and whistles. It also reruns shows during the day to save money. Now that Newsmax is gaining viewers, it will probably gain advertisers as well and will be able to afford more and better on-the-air talent. One former Foxee said that by switching to Newsmax, she felt like she was losing a friend. She also said that she will never have the love affair with Newsmax that she had with Fox. Another said that Fox was almost part of his family. It seems that most of them are past denial, anger, and bargaining, and into depression.

What comes through from all the interviews is that many viewers have a mental model of the world and expect Fox to confirm it, reality be damned. When Fox failed to do that, they looked for another "news" source that did. Whether there was any truth in what they were seeing and hearing is basically irrelevant. If what you want to hear is that Trump won the election, then you keep changing the channel until you find someone saying that. Then you put down the remote control. (V)

Five Myths about Voting Machines

One of the phony reasons Donald Trump is using to claim he won an election that he lost is that the voting machines were rigged against him. Computer scientist Doug Jones from the University of Iowa has written a piece in the Washington Post dispelling all of his arguments. Here is a brief summary of his points:

• Voting machines were hacked: Trump's former lawyer, conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, has said that voting machines changed votes from Trump to Biden. Aha! Gotcha! Except that paperless voting machines aren't used anymore in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the states where Powell and Trump said the machines were hacked. In those states, the voting machines produce paper ballots that are scanned. In Georgia, the paper ballots were counted twice by hand and the results were within a fraction of a percent of the machine totals. In Wisconsin, two heavily Democratic counties, Dane and Milwaukee, were recounted by hand (at Trump's request). Here too the hand counts were essentially identical to the machine counts. In Michigan, one county was recounted and yet again the hand-counted results were the same as the machine results. If somebody tried to hack the voting machines, they didn't do a very good job.
  
  
• There is no way to verify that the counts weren't rigged: Trump supporters say that there wasn't enough transparency in the vote counting. However, the election was conducted out in the open, with observers from both parties present. When the polls closed, the totals were recorded on paper and the unofficial totals were released to the public immediately. All of the documents in the entire process, from the precinct level on up, are public and anyone who wants to can see them all and add up the numbers.
  
  
• Voting machine companies are foreign-owned: Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax kept repeating that the voting machines were made by companies in cahoots with Venezuela. Completely false. In fact, two of the companies being slurred threatened to sue these so-called news sources and they immediately backed down. There was a tiny bit of foreign ownership in the past, which is what got the rumors going. In the 1970s, an Irish conglomerate bought Sequoia Voting Systems, which made voting machines (which were not used in the 2020 election). They sold the business to De La Rue Cash Systems in 2002, which sold it to Smartmatic in 2005. Smartmatic had Venezuela as a customer (not a partner or owner) for a short time. Then the company was sold to its U.S.-based managers. Then it was sold to Dominion, which is a Canadian company, but Dominion moved to the U.S. years ago. That said, it doesn't really matter who makes the machines since all they do is print out paper ballots that voters can verify and scan and which were later hand counted.
  
  
• Slow counting is a sign of fraud: We explained this "blue shift" a dozen times on the site. Democrats voted substantially by absentee ballot. The in-person votes cast on Election Day were substantially Republican. The absentee ballots weren't counted until days later, in some states because the Republican-controlled state legislatures banned early counting of them, despite the secretaries of state pleading for permission to start the count early. So the in-person (largely Republican) votes were announced on election night, and they had Trump ahead, which is what the state legislatures wanted. Then, when the absentee votes were counted, he fell behind. Maybe the state legislators were hoping for a court decision to throw out all the absentee ballots, but that didn't happen.
  
  
• Voting machines have high error rates: In one county (Antrim, MI) the machines were misconfigured initially. This gave rise to some results that were incorrect at first. But the error was corrected early on. In a hand recount, it turned out that Trump's tally was underreported—by 12 votes (0.1%). And it was just one county.
  

In short, it is virtually impossible to affect an election by hacking voting machines if all they do is print out a paper ballot that voters can verify and scan themselves because it is the paper ballot that counts, not the machine total. (V)

Voting Machines Weren't Hacked, But There Are Still Security Lessons to Be Learned

The voting machines weren't hacked (and couldn't be hacked, as described above), and the St. Petersburg troll farm run by the GRU wasn't very active this time, but there were plenty of security lessons to be learned from this election. Politico reporters talked to J. Alex Halderman, an election security expert at the University of Michigan, and others and got a checklist of things that need to be done to restore public confidence in elections before 2022 and certainly before 2024. Here is the list:

• Get rid of paperless voting machines: Voting machines that don't produce a voter-auditable ballot are still in use by some counties. They need to be thrown in the garbage (or possibly dismembered and partially recycled) immediately. All voting should be done either on paper ballots marked directly by the voters or on machines that produce user-readable paper ballots that can be scanned and hand counted. And there must not be any bar codes or QR codes on the ballots, since voters can't verify that they contain the same information as the voter readable parts. Nine states, including Texas (which may some day become a purple state), still use machines that do not produce paper ballots. They must all go. They can't be trusted.
  
  
• Impose national security standards: There are no federal regulations that govern voting systems. There should be. There is a federal agency, called the Election Assistance Commission, that issues voluntary guidelines that states are free to ignore. Also, the guidelines are 15 years old. There need to be new regulations that are mandatory. For example, a regulation should state that no voting machine can be connected to the Internet. Ever. Another one should state that no new voting machine purchased going forward should even have the capability to be connected to any network. That means no internal modem, no RJ45 (Ethernet) connectors outside or inside the machine, and certainly no WiFi capability. Likewise, optical scanners must not have any networking capabilities. What are also needed are standards for the electronic poll books used to check in voters and for the websites that report election results. Doing this will be difficult because Republicans don't want the federal government meddling in state affairs like elections, despite the obvious fact that many states are no match for the Russian SVR or GRU. Consequently, election security has become a partisan issue, with Democrats for security and Republicans against security.
  
  
• Get more money from Congress: States can't afford to junk old voting machines that are not up to snuff. This means that Congress has to step up to the plate and provide the funds to buy new machines. Also, there is an ongoing cost for plugging holes and updating voting machine software as bugs are reported. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) said: "Election security and integrity is not something you can invest in only once in a generation." Padilla will soon be a U.S. senator and hopefully he will bring this point up with his soon-to-be colleagues. States need a permanent security staff that keeps the software up to date and keeps an eye out for potential problems. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated that replacing obsolete equipment conducting security audits will cost $2 billion in the next 5 years. That is down in the weeds in the federal budget. The House passed two bills to provide the $2 billion, but Mitch McConnell refused to even bring them up for a vote in the Senate.
  
  
• Expand risk-limiting audits: As a matter of course, a random sample of ballots should always be audited in every election. This will improve public confidence in elections and catch problems that might otherwise have been missed. Mathematical formulas for determining how to do this are well-established and some states, pioneered by Colorado, are already doing it. All elections should use this method.
  
  
• Halt the push for Internet voting: Internet voting is a dreadful, horrible, awful, miserable, frightful, insecure way to vote. People who propose it should politely, but firmly, be told "NO NO NO NO NO NO!" And while we are on the subject, "NO!!!" Maybe even an eighth "NO!," but seven at the minimum. Some states are proposing letting people with disabilities to vote remotely. It's a very bad idea and opens the door to the GRU getting to vote. Other ways need to be found to let people with disabilities vote, including greater use of absentee ballots (possibly available in Braille), free transportation to the polls for people with disabilities preventing them from going on their own, etc. But not Internet voting. It is not safe and cannot be made safe.
  
  
• Calming tensions between vendors and security experts: Traditionally, security researchers and vendors have had a very fractious relationship because as soon as vendors give researchers access to sniff around inside their machines, the researchers find boatloads of security holes. Vendors would prefer these not to be made public. This forces researchers to buy old second-hand machines. But then the vendors say that their results don't hold because they tested old machines. It is possible that Donald Trump can help here. By denouncing the machines as rigged, this gives the vendors some incentive to allow researchers access to the most modern equipment under the proviso that if they find serious bugs, the vendors are allowed to fix them and have the tests redone. Then, when everything is fixed, if a team of researchers from half a dozen top universities in computer security issues a report saying that the machines are bulletproof, the vendors might actually be glad they allowed the testing.
  

Are these things doable? Technically there are no problems, but they require the will to make elections secure and the money to pay for them. This really should be a top priority for the new Congress. (V)

Vaccine Hesitancy Is Fading Away, Just Like Donald Trump

Although Donald Trump never pooh-poohed the coronavirus vaccine, he also didn't get a shot on television, as did Mike Pence. To some of his most faithful supporters, that was a sign that it might be dangerous. It's true that he had COVID-19, but Anthony Fauci has recommended getting the vaccine anyway, even if you had the disease.

The good news is that now that Trump has largely gone radio silent and de facto stopped being president (except for furiously exercising the pardon power), people who were against getting the vaccine are having a change of heart. In some cases, that is due to high-profile people getting the vaccine in public (Fauci, Mike Pence, Joe Biden, etc.), and in some cases the "opposition" to the vaccine ("I don't trust big government/big pharma") was abstract and didn't matter since it wasn't available anyway. But now that it is starting to be delivered, people have a very specific choice to make. And with 200,000 Americans a day getting COVID-19 and well over 3,000 dying from it, people who opposed the vaccine "in principle" are now starting to put their own health above abstract principles. Also a factor is that science is "in" again, with Biden repeatedly saying that he will follow the advice of doctors and scientists in areas of their competence. This undoubtedly will influence some people.

Pollsters have noted the change in public opinion. Polls from Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Pew Research Center have all shown that the portion of the population planning to get vaccinated has grown from 50% in the summer to 60%, 65%, or even 73% in one recent poll. Once Biden takes over and starts urging people to protect their health and get the vaccine, many more will probably drop their objections. Also, Biden will undoubtedly unmuzzle Anthony Fauci, who is widely respected on matters of health, and have him talk to the media constantly. In addition, Biden's choice for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, who was surgeon general in the Obama administration, will also play a role. Earlier this month, Murthy said: "I am grateful for this opportunity to help end the pandemic." With virtually everyone in the federal government urging people to get vaccinated as soon as that is possible, it is entirely possible that 70% or more of the population will have been vaccinated by the summer. That may be close to enough to achieve a reasonable herd immunity.

There is also some sizable contingent of Americans who might not get the vaccine, if left to their own devices, but who will be compelled to do so by their employers. Many universities, for example, already mandate that faculty and staff get flu shots each year, and COVID-19 shots will surely be added to the list, if they haven't been already. Undoubtedly, many secondary and primary schools will adopt similar measures. Similarly, it is probable that businesses that are public-facing will also require employees to get vaccinated. Can the management at, say, Antonio's Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant really run the risk that one of their wait staff becomes infected and passes the disease on to a bunch of staffers and employees? It is plausible that someone required to get a COVID-19 vaccination in order to keep their jobs could sue, but anti-vaxxers are not a protected class, and besides, they'd be out of a job for two years while the suit was resolved. Probably easier to just bow to reality. Court decisions make it clear that private companies can make reasonable demands on their employees to safeguard other employees and customers. So no, you don't have some "constitutional right" to tell Antonio that you aren't going to get vaccinated and that is his problem. It is your problem trying to explain to your next potential employer why you and Antonio parted ways.

Another factor that may be playing a role is that 20 million Americans have already been infected. Supposing that each person knows 10 people, then 200 million people know someone who has been infected, most of whom got sick to some extent. That is an overestimate, of course, because if several people in a family got the virus, the "10" people they know probably overlap. Still, the number of people who personally know someone who got really sick from the virus is probably a substantial fraction of the population. Watching grandma barely able to breathe might just convince people that COVID-19 is for real. And it is widely believed that even Republicans have grandmas.

This is not to say that everybody is with the program now. In particular, Black men are the most skeptical demographic group, with only 42% saying that they are going to get vaccinated (up from 32% in the summer). Many Black men are no doubt aware of the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which men with syphilis were not treated in order to see what would happen to them, even though a perfectly fine treatment (penicillin) was available. No wonder many Black men don't trust the government. Of course, Biden can, and probably will, enlist many Black leaders (starting with the vice president) to try to calm their fears. If Raphael Warnock is elected senator next week, he would also be a good person to urge vaccination. So would his fellow Georgian, Stacey Abrams. Basketball player LeBron James, who is very politically active and already has infrastructure in place, and whose career was impacted in high-profile fashion by COVID-19, would be another likely vaccine ambassador.

Other groups that have a lot of vaccine hesitancy are Republicans, conservatives, people in rural areas, people with little education, and new immigrants. These are groups that don't get flu shots regularly either. It will take quite a PR campaign to get them vaccinated, especially if there are actual barriers to getting the vaccine, like having to drive for 2 hours to get to a clinic.

But probably the most powerful motivator will be people's desire to get their lives back. Once people are vaccinated, they may feel they can do anything they used to do and that this terrible epoch will be behind them. That could push many people over the line and get them to vaccination clinics more than anything. (V & Z)

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