You Already Concluded The Coronavirus Proves Our Healthcare System Is Totally Broken?– Here Are Two More Stories That Make Ultra-clear Our Private Insurance Company-based Healthcare System Is Wack

The first time I wrote about the Covid-19 virus I wrote:

Covid-19 could not be a more perfect and obvious “my health is your health/your health is my health” argument for Medicare for all.  With massive, nationwide layoffs because of the Covid-19 health crisis, millions of Americans are now losing their “if you like your private employer health plan, you can keep it,” health insurance right at the time when they need it most.

I thought it was pretty obvious that our private insurance company-based healthcare system is broken when I wrote that.  But now there are two more stories that totally torpedo the idea that a private insurance company-based healthcare system makes any sense at all.  The two stories must be treated as related in a sisterly way, but it is not clear that everybody is making the connections that need to be made.

One story is that the coronavirus crisis is actually driving up the profits for Healthcare insurers because, as a result of the health crisis, the demand for nonessential medical treatment that the insurance companies have to pay for has plummeted.  In other words, even as there is a need to channel extra resources in the direction of dealing with the virus, the health insurers get to pocket a windfall because, overall, the entire community of patients is currently getting less to address its health care needs.  Even crazier, at the same time health insurance companies are getting to pocket the windfall from these healthcare crisis vicissitudes, hospitals, extra burdened by Covid, are facing financial failure as they shutdown other activities and patient treatments they depend on for their financial equilibrium.

Here is what Democracy Now reported last Friday, as part of its headlines respecting healthcare insurer profits (probably picking it up from Common Dreams the day before):

The for-profit health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group reported profits grew by over $160 million during the first quarter of 2020, as demand for nonessential medical treatment plummeted while coronavirus hospitalizations surged. UnitedHealth reported a 3.4% year-over-year increase in quarterly earnings to $5 billion. Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter tweeted in response, “The earnings were so good, the company said it still expects to make as much in total profits this year as they predicted in December … when no one could predict the massive loss of life & jobs caused by the coronavirus. In other words, they’re thriving during a pandemic.”

But it gets worse!  Vice News is reporting that Democrats are planning to address the Covid-19 crisis by plowing more money into premiums that will go to the insurance companies.  (See: Democrats’ Big Coronavirus Idea Is to Subsidize Health Insurers- Instead of pushing for public health solutions, Democrats want to cover COBRA premiums.)  In other words, Democrats are going to direct Covid-19 `solution money' to where the problem doesn’t exist and where that money can be intercepted and siphoned off as more insurance company profit windfall.  By definition, insurance is a game of chance, so that premiums paying for insurance are, as a matter of high probability, paid for people who are likely not sick and not needing treatment. .   And these days, as noted, those people are probably trying to minimize the medical treatments they are getting that the insurance companies could be expected to pay for.

Healthcare planing is one of things I studied back in the 70s to get my Masters of Urban Planning degree.  Maybe I didn’t get into it deeply enough at the time, but I certainly don’t remember anything in my studies pointing out that we could have a system this insane.

Certainly it’s clear that our private insurance company-based healthcare system is broken and that the solution is some kind of universal healthcare, something along the lines of Medicare for all as was championed by Bernie Sanders. .   But as a good indication that another system is broken, our political system, I had to point out the last time I wrote about the coronavirus that, all of this notwithstanding, Joe Biden stated very recently that if the Democrats pass Medicare for all he will veto it if he is elected president.

Spectacular Female Alternative Journalists, Emerging Leaders In The Field

I’ve got a list:

    •    Rania Khalek
    •    Abby Martin
    •    Krystal Ball
    •    Caitlin Johnstone
    •    Whitney Webb
    •    Naomi Klein
    •    Anya Parampil
    •    Medea Benjamin
    •    Naomi Karavani
    •    Natalie McGill
    •    Kim Iversen
    •    Katie Halper
    •    Jane Mayer
    •    Cathy O’Neil
    •    Laura Flanders

You may think you know what my list is a list of– but I, myself, am not sure that I have yet figured out exactly what my list represents or even who, exactly, should be on it.  You can help me.

It is correct to observe that my list is all women.  We can describe everyone going on my list as a journalist.  I started formulating my list as a few significant individuals caught my eye. I grew my list beginning with a core of several women who I realized were getting my attention repeatedly . . journalists I was realized I was regularly wanting to check in with frequently, because I wanted to hear their latest thoughts and perspective on things.  And so I was noticing. . .

Those who should be on my list are doing amazing, spectacular work.  So who should be on it?           
There should be nothing unexpected about women being great journalists.  I am male.  I’d like to think that I don’t have any bias or preconceptions against women achieving greatness as journalists.  I hope not.  I come from an extended family in which there were many women with
notable achievements as journalists, writers and people who were otherwise very involved in publishing and editing.  I am not going to mention any of the members of my family here, because this rumination about “my list” and who should be on it is about women who are distinguishing themselves for accomplishing a different category of things.  This article certainly isn’t about what women from my family have achieved . .  .  Plus, frankly, by the criteria I am zeroing in to qualify those to be on this list, I don’t think my family members would measure up to some high standards I think are involved here, whatever the other illustrious achievements the women in my family have as  journalists.

The women I am thinking should be on my list should all be there because they insightfully and adroitly challenge the official narratives offered by the powerful.  Thus, it's probably redundant to say that those getting on this list should all probably also wind up being described as journalists from the alternative media.  Alternative media is now more important than ever.  Although we may have the illusion of many outlets for information throughout our culture, when the behind-the-scenes ownership of these outlets is considered those outlets shrink down to outlets outputting product for just a few similarly-minded monpolistic corporate media conglomerates.

But being an “alternative media journalist” should not, alone, be enough to get included in this list.

What I like about the journalists that got me started in trying to compile this list, Rania Khalek, Abby Martin, Krystal Ball, Caitlin Johnstone, Whitney Webb, is the kind of swipe-away-the-cobwebs, cut-through-the-crap sense of clarity I experience when exposed to their work.  I think this comes from their having a clear world view, anchored by well-informed, reference points that prevents drift when confronted by narrative fictions.  They are able to decisively dispense with and dispose of propaganda.

It is likely that media literacy and the ability to offer trenchant commentary on mainstream corporate media (i.e., like Krystal Ball, Rania Khalek, Caitlin Johnstone) when making sense of the news and what needs to be reported, will accompany other talents that get journalists on this list–  But it needn’t be de rigueur that such media literacy talent is ostentatiously displayed; it’s enough, I think, for these journalists to be able to keep their bearings in terms of knowing where to find real and/or more reliable information and what nonsense or fluff to discount or to reject out of hand.  That makes some of these journalists (e.g. Whitney Webb) remarkable researchers. 

There are female journalists who would likely want to be on this elevated list, but are not going to get on it.

I suspect that Amy Goodman of Democracy Now would want to be put on it.  Running “Democracy Now” Amy Goodman is running an important news organization that seeks support advertising itself as “independent news.”   I recommend its weekday broadcasts, particularly for keeping up with headlines.  Once upon a time, I probably would have put Amy Goodman on the list as well. Ms. Goodman would have been a candidate earlier, when Democracy Now was first being incubated out of Pacifica’s WBAI radio station in New York (Laura Flanders and Katie Halper also have connection with WBAI and shows that are broadcast on Pacifica and WBAI like Democracy Now).  Early on, Amy Goodman would probably have been on the list for things like the WBAI 2000 Election Day radio interview where she famously reeled in Bill Clinton to defend his record when Clinton called her show to get out votes for the candidates, or when Ms. Goodman was risking her life and was nearly killed reporting in 1991 on the massacre of  pro-independence demonstrators in East Timor by the occupying Indonesian government.

Nevertheless, Democracy Now is now a big organization that stays too much within the rails of its own acceptable narratives, limiting its awareness and what it is willing to challenge.  Even if it ranges more broadly than the conglomerate-owned networks to challenge U.S. wars, the limits of what DN is willing to discern have given it a sort of gatekeeper function.  That means Democracy Now can even be a conduit for official propaganda.  As Aaron Maté noted on April 10th, and actually took it upon himself to write Amy Goodman about, there was a very sad irony when, right before an interview with Noam Chomsky, Democracy Now continued “to Manufacture Consent in its Syria coverage” with a headline about a new `report' by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) about Syria that, as Maté noted, ignored (as Democracy Now has been doing for months) the OPCW whistleblowers who were pointing out how the OPCW was falsifying the basis for its reports. . . I fervently hope and expect that anybody making it on to the list I am endeavoring to compile would never let that kind of thing go by.

Clearly, if the list I am compiling were open to including men, there would be journalists like Aaron Maté, to add to it.  Max Blumenthal would probably be on it for his work at the Grayzone.  He just  married fellow Grayzoner Anya Parampil as the month of March was ushering in quarantines leading Caitlin Johnstone to quip that “Their babies are each gonna have their own Bellingcat narrative managers assigned to them at birth.” (If you are not following, Bellingcat is an organization devoted to pushing out twisted propaganda narratives to discredit the kind of journalists you would find on this list while posing as “internet sleuths” devoted to discovering the truth.)

If someone is going to mention Rachel Maddow (because she is female and may herself have the temerity to say she is a journalist), you are not understanding what the aspirations are here with respect to this list. Maddow may be bright, capable and she is recognizably very well paid ($7 million a year) to be a sell-out, but she is an example of the exact opposite who should be on the list;* she is involved in the kind of propaganda-spewing brain-shut-downs that people who should be on the list would be on the list for countering.  Being well-known or well paid as a female journalist, the way that Barbara Walters (who went to Sarah Lawrence like me) was, is not the ticket to get on this list.  It's not that easy.

(* We won’t go back to try to assess Maddow’s earlier Air America days.)

I haven’t concluded who exactly should, or should not, be on this list. I am keeping an open mind. I invite you to make you own additions and subtractions and to feel free to make modifications to criteria as well.   Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK has written articles and books; she gives talks and appears on news programs like Democracy Now, but she might be thought of more as an activist because she takes action.  (CODEPINK also has a program on WBAI radio and its sister Pacifica station, WPFW.)  Nevertheless, I think that most of the journalists on this list are at the activist end of the spectrum.  I think that, while they believe that journalism involves an obligation to be truthful, that they do not believe they should maintain false pretenses about their neutrality when they see what they see.

Naomi Klein has, at this point, integrated into the mainstream perhaps more than anyone on this list.  She has no problem getting onto Democracy Now where she appears quite regularly, and she sometimes makes it onto MSNBC, CNN, things like the Colbert Report, etc. Nevertheless, her videos like on “Coronavirus Capitalism” are much like Rania Khalek’s Soapbox videos the way that they deflate and counter official narratives.  All of Klein's work generally succeeds in this manner.

Jane Mayer is similarly accepted in the mainstream.  She is still published in the increasingly right-wing New Yorker and she is widely interviewed, but Mayer’s well researched investigative work also tears the veil off the workings of the interrelated political and U.S. economic systems.

When I began compiling my list, I tried taking a few of the names of some of the most obvious candidates for the list and Google them together.  (I was hoping to find the names of more candidates that way.)  I was surprised when nothing came up.  Maybe now, with the publication of this list, that won’t be the case.

If you are interested in what these women are doing, I’ve hyperlinked their names to their Twitter feeds, which tends to be one of the easiest ways to find out about them.  The ratings for Krystal Ball’s “Rising” program, begun on HillTV in 2018 and available through YouTube, are skyrocketing.  Whitney Webb wound up on many people’s radar screen garnering attention with her connect-the-dots series of articles about Jeffrey Epstein, most of those articles written before his announced death.  Abby Martin has a new documentary out about the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip.  Katie Halper is doing a new podcast and YouTube broadcast with Matt Taibbi . . Oh, wait- That’s transitioning us back into the subject of male journalists doing this kind of work.– Didn’t mean to do that.

My Experiment With “Russian Doll” Tweets (Tweets Starting From Bernie Sanders Suspending His Campaign To Michael Bloomberg Being Declared U.S. Treasury Secretary In The Event of Marshal Law– And Back Again!)

I’ve just experimented with creating a chain of “Russian Doll” Tweets.

Maybe it’s cabin fever from spending too much time alone indoors sequestered away from friends and community . . .

. . . or maybe, it’s that this Russian Doll Tweet exercise I’ve engaged in is solace, providing the illusion of an organized structure for information as we experience overload.  The inflow of news and information about coronavirus that spins around us seems so disorganized and unhelpful, at least to me, the 24/7 news cycle pelting us with statistics that inadequately describe multiple unknowns.

My Russian Doll Tweets (from @WhiteMDD, my personal Twitter account, not the @NatNotice National Notice Twitter account) started with noting that I still have the option of voting for Bernie Sanders in the primaries (I am a New Yorker), and those tweets went eventually to the observation that Michael Bloomberg’s buying up of Democrats’ voter data (follow the links) might have the outcome of Bloomberg’s being appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary if marshal law is declared in the wake of a “failed” national election.  (I apologize for my spelling, which on Twitter I can't go back to correct.). .

. . Twitter allowed me to create the chain because, with Twitter, you can retweet another tweet "with comment" to make a new combined Tweet.

But the only way, through Twitter, to open the Tweets and enjoy them Russian Doll style is to start with the last tweet about how Bloomberg becomes U.S. Treasury Secretary and follow it back to how I will still able to vote for Bernie Sanders even if he is not running a campaign I can financially contribute to.

However, via the posting here, I can give you the choice of enjoying the Russian Doll tweets in either direction:

To read them backward you can go to Twitter. . .

(Also, please note that some of the individual tweets, as you will see, themselves have links embedded in them that can take you to some interesting, informative places.)

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

. .  or go to the Part II end of this article.  To read them forward, as they were written, from the first, start below with Part I:

PART I

Here are the Russian Doll tweets in the order they were tweeted.

Tweet: Bernie’s suspension of it means I can no longer contribute $ for him to use in a campaign almost impossible to really run in a virus environment, but b/c he remains on all ballots collecting delegates I can still vote for him as reality continues to endorse him and Biden dements.

Tweet: And I still regret that Bernie is not more of a fighter, willing to challenge whether Biden really, truly, and honestly gained and holds the delegate lead purportedly given him by the media despite evidence to the contrary such as the highly discrepant exit polls.

Tweet: While I fume that Bernie suspended his campaign, I find his “suspension” speech seductively good. Am I just a sucker? Or is my cynical suspicion resulting in a crippling rejection of “hope.” (“Hope”? That was the Obama promise.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/9/bernie_sanders_drops_out_of_race

Tweet: On @democracynow @noamchomskyT offers “hope” that a “Biden” administration would be better than a Trump, even an Obama administration, b/c it would be more susceptible to the influence of a newly assertive left awakened by Sanders campaign; & address . . https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/10/noam_chomsky_trump_us_coronavirus_response

Tweet: Would a “Biden” admin be susceptible (more than Trump’s) to the influence of newly assertive left and finally address climate chaos, income inequality, militarism, etc.- The Sanders list? Biden “conceding” to lower Medicare age to 60 puts him far to the right of other Dems.

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: But there are those that think rather than wonder about the possibilities of how Continuity of Government (“COG”) concerns would be handled in a demented “Biden” administration we should worry if there will be any national elections at all. https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/09/standing-on-the-precipice-of-martial-law/

Tweet: Those worrying that Marshall Law would bring in unconstitutional Continuity of Government changes in the wake of a “failed” election include @_whitneywebb who has been writing of these worries since before the virus arrived. https://twitter.com/blacklistednews/status/1242240104644505600?s=21

Tweet: If Marshall Law is declared in the wake of a “failed” election we might, to give it cover, get something like the absolutely inane “National Unity Cabinet” proposed by bombastic NY Times columnist Tom Friedman! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/10/bide-a10.html

Tweet: In the Tom Friedman “National Unity Cabinet” the country might get if Marshall Law is ushered in in wake of a “failed” election, Michael Bloomberg would be U.S. Treasury Secretary in exchange for spending billions to scoop up the Democrats’ voter data. https://twitter.com/whitemdd/status/1249017082987118593?s=21

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

PART II

Here are the Russian Doll tweets in the order they can be followed backward through Twitter.

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

Tweet: In the Tom Friedman “National Unity Cabinet” the country might get if Marshall Law is ushered in in wake of a “failed” election, Michael Bloomberg would be U.S. Treasury Secretary in exchange for spending billions to scoop up the Democrats’ voter data. https://twitter.com/whitemdd/status/1249017082987118593?s=21

Tweet: If Marshall Law is declared in the wake of a “failed” election we might, to give it cover, get something like the absolutely inane “National Unity Cabinet” proposed by bombastic NY Times columnist Tom Friedman! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/10/bide-a10.html

Tweet: Those worrying that Marshall Law would bring in unconstitutional Continuity of Government changes in the wake of a “failed” election include @_whitneywebb who has been writing of these worries since before the virus arrived. https://twitter.com/blacklistednews/status/1242240104644505600?s=21

Tweet: But there are those that think rather than wonder about the possibilities of how Continuity of Government (“COG”) concerns would be handled in a demented “Biden” administration we should worry if there will be any national elections at all. https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/09/standing-on-the-precipice-of-martial-law/

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: Would a “Biden” admin be susceptible (more than Trump’s) to the influence of newly assertive left and finally address climate chaos, income inequality, militarism, etc.- The Sanders list? Biden “conceding” to lower Medicare age to 60 puts him far to the right of other Dems.

Tweet: On @democracynow @noamchomskyT offers “hope” that a “Biden” administration would be better than a Trump, even an Obama administration, b/c it would be more susceptible to the influence of a newly assertive left awakened by Sanders campaign; & address . . https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/10/noam_chomsky_trump_us_coronavirus_response

Tweet: While I fume that Bernie suspended his campaign, I find his “suspension” speech seductively good. Am I just a sucker? Or is my cynical suspicion resulting in a crippling rejection of “hope.” (“Hope”? That was the Obama promise.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/9/bernie_sanders_drops_out_of_race

Tweet: And I still regret that Bernie is not more of a fighter, willing to challenge whether Biden really, truly, and honestly gained and holds the delegate lead purportedly given him by the media despite evidence to the contrary such as the highly discrepant exit polls.

Tweet: Bernie’s suspension of it means I can no longer contribute $ for him to use in a campaign almost impossible to really run in a virus environment, but b/c he remains on all ballots collecting delegates I can still vote for him as reality continues to endorse him and Biden dements.

Boeing Blames Its Two 737 MAX Jet Crashes On U.S. FAA Regulations- Demands Federal Compensation

Boeing management today released the result of an internally conducted study that found that its two Boeing 737 MAX Jet Crashes were caused by United States Federal Aviation Administration regulations.  Boeing demanded immediate action from Congress to compensate their company for all crash losses.  Their demand includes asking for Boeing to be compensated for the economic loses and reduced profits Boeing suffered due to worldwide grounding of 737 MAX jets that ensued following the cashes.

Boeing’s spokesperson for the occasion of the release of the report, Skip Ayres Ohsonize, explained that while everybody knows that regulation of American companies makes them less competitive and thereby weakens them, what the report revealed was something less obvious; that excess federal government regulation can foment unforeseen dangers as well. Mr. Ohsonize explained that federal regulation had essentially forced Boeing into designing a dangerous plane.

“Boeing, our company, was in an untenable position,” said Mr. Ohsonize.  Airbus SE the European multinational aerospace corporation, had moved into a position where it was taking the most airliner orders internationally and was poised to be take over the airliner market with increasing sales of its new A320 airliner.  “We weren’t going to stand by and let Airbus steal market share,” said Mr. Ohsonize, “that’s something that an American company has a duty to prevent, and we needed to move quickly.” The main selling point of the new A320 was its fuel-efficient engines. “We appropriately rushed to provide a Boeing alternative,” said Mr. Ohsonize, “that’s when the way in which F.A.A. regulations were unfortunately structured to slow us down if we took certain actions forced us into dangerous airplane design.”

Larger and powerful new engines were the key that was absolutely necessary to provide an airliner that would be able advertise competitive fuel efficiency.   Bigger engines to provide this fuel efficiency involve different airplane aerodynamics.  Mr. Ohsonize, said, “it is easy to understand that, without F.A.A. regulations factoring in, the obvious best way for us at Boeing to proceed would have been to design a new airliner from scratch.”

“But under F.A.A. regulations, it would have taken a decade to produce a new plane from scratch,” said Mr. Sogh Ahlphaul, an engineer contributing to the report for Boeing.  That’s because F.A.A. regulations would have required an extensive review certification process for any new airframe and fuselage, plus a brand new airline design would have required the purchasing airlines to spend millions of dollars on additional pilot training. “Facing competitive pressure from Airbus, we needed to avoid that,” said Mr. Ahlphaul.  He further explained:

Under the circumstances and needing to maintain profits, we were forced to go in the direction that F.A.A. regulations were clearly steering us: It was far quicker, easier and cheaper, and would provide almost as much fuel savings to mount larger engines on an existing airframe, and so we used the airframe of the earlier 737 models.

In other words, base the MAX would be one more member in Boeing’s “737 family,” a well-known design, rooted in the original 1967 certification of the B737-100.

Mr. Ahlphaul explained that “the F.A.A., for regulation purposes, would then allow us to say that this airplane was essentially the same as earlier 737 models, making it easy to certify it quickly.”  Moreover, this approach would limit any training that regulations might otherwise dictate that pilots could need, thus, he said, “cutting down costs for the purchasing airlines.”

Mr. Ohsonize, said:

Our report makes clear how the course the regulations drove us to take at Boeing was not optimal.  The old vintage airframe on which the new larger engines were mounted was designed with its wings very low to the ground, requiring more clearance for the larger engines.  That clearance could only be achieved by moving the engines forward.  Additionally, the landing gears also needed to be moved forward. This altered the aerodynamics of the plane, making it more likely to pitch up in some circumstances.  It made it harder to fly and it handled in an unstable fashion, with a tendency for the airplane to buck upward, very different in ways from what pilots, used to the classic 737 workhorse model from the days of yore, were familiar with.  These differences were mostly opposite to what pilots might intuitively understand from their previous experience.

“That’s why,” said Mr. Ahlphaul, “we interfaced the Artificial Intelligence automated MCAS system to let that robot system fly the plane while allowing pilots to feel like they were flying another plan entirely.”  The system would take care of adjustments to the aircraft and its behavior tendencies automatically, like automatic signals to the horizontal stabilizer to push the nose back down when it pitched up. Doing this avoided any need to retrain pilots.

The pilots could operate the plane the same way they operated prior iterations. “We could not let any designs we created be something where F.A.A. regulations would irksomely drive any new training that required a simulator; That was a first imperative,” said Mr. Ahlphaul.

Another bad decision the F.A.A. requirements forced, according to Mr. Ahlphaul, was the design of the cockpit instrument panel.  He explained:

When we updated the cockpit, actually ungraded to a digital display, we would have liked to have redesigned the layout of information to give pilots added data so they could have had information to track all the newly layered on idiosyncratic behaviors of the 737 MAX Jet design.  We could even have made the panel easier to read. That’s what we would have done absent F.A.A. Regulation, but, once again, when the constraints of F.A.A. regulations had to be considered, such a redesigned panel that did not accord with the notional conceit that, for regulatory purposes, pilots were flying 737 models, not something else, would have triggered an expensive regulatory requirement for new pilot training.

“It’s too bad regulations precluded this option,” supplied Mr. Ohsonize with emphasis, “because it could have helped the human pilots fill in some necessary blanks about their situation when the robot MCAS system failed to read sensors, as happened, contributing to the crashes.”

At the press conference where the report was released, Rahz Zellmann, a Boeing Senior Vice President, was on hand to state Boeing’s demands for the compensation it was demanding from the federal government for the damage. First off Mr. Zellmann wanted to be clear that the F.A.A. regulations were not Boeing’s fault.  He said that Boeing had been fighting for years to eliminate such regulations, and that Boeing had even succeeded in pushing through legal changes that reduced F.A.A. regulatory oversight, replacing it with Boeing having the power of self-certification in its factories, with more and more certification responsibilities being handed over to the manufacturers over the years. But Mr. Zellmann said that half-way measures of this kind were not enough.

Mr. Zellmann said that when self-certifications were coupled with old criteria and standards that remained applicable, Boeing engineers still wound up self-consciously distracted and looking over their shoulders thinking that if F.A.A. technical staff became had been fully aware of designs details and changes (including for instance with the MCAS robot guidance) the agency could likely require additional scrutiny.  “Engendering this kind of nervousness,” said Mr. Zellmann, “is not the same thing, as having the totally unencumbered ability you need to design freely and sidestep a meddlesome government.”  Mr. Zellmann said that self-certification had, however, allowed Boeing to achieve some benefits, such as determining that certain modern safety tools incorporated into newer editions of other airliners in 737 family, did not need to be included in the MAX because they were “impractical.”

Mr. Zellmann said that Boeing’s demand both for elimination of regulation and for compensation from the federal government ought now additionally to looked at, in an edifying way, through the lens of the Covid-19 coronavius crisis.  Zellmann noted that, taking into account the virus crisis, the Environment Protection Agency was indefinitely suspending enforcement of environmental laws.  According to Mr. Zellmann, that just goes to show how unimportant these laws actually are for protecting the public.  “They are half window dressing,” said Mr. Zellmann said, “and half an excuse for members of Congress to demand campaign contributions from the regulated firms as the expensive price to procure regulatory capture.”

“More important,” Mr. Zellmann said, “the corona virus crisis, comes at a time when it is crucial for the United States to remain strong.”  “This means,” said Mr. Zellmann, “that even if Boeing were not identifying the harms and losses Boeing suffered by virtue of the F.A.A. regulation, that at the present moment the federal government should be stepping up to give trillions to Boeing, because Boeing is one of the key military contractors requiring the most money from the United States to stay on a constant worldwide war footing.”  Zellmann made the point that the federal government could not afford to let grounded Boeing MAX jets financially weaken Boeing’s ability to keep the country strong and stand up to other countries during the coronavirus crisis.  Mr. Zellmann said that to protect the United States during the Covid-19 crisis it was essential for there to be as many military airplanes manufactured by Boeing to be able to make sure that countries like Iran were cut off from the medical supplies they needed so that the virus could multiple there and not here.           

“We benefit,” said Mr. Zellmann, “if we can assure that virus multiplication means that they have a far worse escalation of infectious cases within their borders than we do within ours.”  “It’s the kind of warfare you have to wage when to comes to germs,” said Mr. Zellmann. Said Mr. Zellman, “Boeing’s strong backup is a crucial ingredient to the U.S.’s intensification of sanctions against Iran to further weaken its healthcare system and economy during the during COVID-19 crisis.”

Mr. Zellmann said that with the Covid-19 crisis timing is everything: February wasn’t March and everything will certainly be different this coming month from the way it was in March.  He noted that Congress was acting quickly, as of a few days ago, to send trillions of dollars in Covid-19 bailout money to big corporations, of which Boeing naturally expected its share.  Mr. Zellmann said Boeing was releasing it’s report and demands for compensation at the beginning of this month to ensure that Congress didn’t move to unfairly prevent Boeing from getting everything is deserved with some sort of anti-double dipping provision, or anti-triple dipping provision.  That’s why, Mr. Zellman emphasized the official release date for the report is today, April 1st.

Reflections On What It Means To Be Retreating More Into Virtual Existence In Fear Of A Virus

This is not intended to provide any sort of conclusion as to where to draw the line about appropriate cautions to take as we make our individual and collective decisions about dealing with Covid-19.  Still, I feel it’s essential to reflect on certain things as we adopt unfamiliar, new and unnatural ways of living and societally interacting.

As we are increasingly prompted to convert all our social and interpersonal dealings into a virtual, through-the-internet verisimilitude replication of the lives that we used to lead, some kind of existence that is ethereally Matrix-like, it is important to remember how the internet was built for data-scraping and surveillance.  Amazon, with its strange history and ties to the U.S. Military and intelligence communities, already knows far too much about everyone already, and our encouraged wholesale retreat into manifesting our interactions in exclusively digitally ways will only be making the big internet monopolies more formidably ginormous and powerful.  A lot of us now find ourselves on Zoom conferencing discovering its merits as one of the prime candidates for virtual meeting options– Zoom sends your data to Facebook even if you don't have a Facebook account–  And Facebook has a record of coordinating, Big Brother style, with groups like the Atlantic Council and Cambridge Analytica that affected the 2016 election.  Let’s also remember that internet technology, knowing what it knows about us as it collects information about us for that purpose, can manipulate us as well.  It is routinely hired out to do so.

Heretofore, some of the antidote for the control of control and ubiquity of the internet was to take a break and go where the internet’s reach and influence might peter out: Have face-to-face, peer-to-peer personal interactions, read physical vs. digital books, assemble together in real meetings, assemblies and forums, listen to and support the kind of live radio that the internet cannot squelch, censor or take away.  It is part of the reason that I, as a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries have been fighting for the continuation of traditional libraries with physical books and trained human being librarians. . .  It is part of the reason I support WBAI radio, 99.5 FM, the Pacifica station in New York that is New York City's only truly listener supported public radio station.

. . . You may have noticed that a spin-off of the coronaviris effects has been the closure of most libraries.  We would hope that this is not subsequently cited as additional evidence that this public commons is a public asset society can now dispense with.  Meanwhile, the public’s habits of hanging out in the shallower digital internet world will, perforce, be reinforced as we live protecting ourselves from the virus.

. . . With the emphasis on digital substitution you may not have noticed that lock downs and new rules against groups of more than a certain number of people gathering, for instance restricting groups to no more than ten, leaves by the wayside the First Amendment right of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution.  Why was the right of public assembly one of the first enumerated rights?  Seasoned activists are well acquainted with the fact that when opposing war, or agitating for rights including, for instance, healthcare, the clicking of Facebook posts to like them or even generating acerbically astute and insightful Tweets, just doesn’t cut it and hardly equals the impact of crowds getting out into the streets.

We are also in the middle of a national election.  I recently joked (before some of the new really strict new controls) that those in power were coming up with a prohibition on future Bernie Sanders’s rallies, but that they weren’t bothering with an equivalent rule for Joe Biden rallies because Biden doesn’t draw any crowds.  Is there a virtual substitute for the formidably energetic Bernie troops knocking on doors; something they will not now be able to do?  Telephone calls are not the same as face-to-face knocking on doors.

Nothing is the same as face-to-face and knocking on doors because human beings were not built for virtual existences.  We are social animals designed for the social bonds that come from real interactions.  When we are infants, the mother holding the child generates the hormone oxytocin, which promotes the bond between the mother and child.  Same thing when a father holds the baby.  It is a physical thing.  The same hormones are generated when owners pet their pets, in both the pet owner and the pet.

Oxytocin from human closeness not only generates, builds and strengthens the bonds between human beings, it actually confers benefits like building up the immune system, calming us, and making us more capable.  It is ironic that, as we go into isolation to avoid getting sick with the coronavirus, we may actually, through our isolation and physical separation, be weakening our immune system’s ability to respond to and for us to survive the virus if we get infected. . .  Thinking about how important human physical touch is, holding a hand, giving and receiving a hug, I feel, in depth and achingly for the afflicted patients who must recover separated and physically apart from their loved ones.

When email took over as the new default method of communication, the phenomenon of “flaming” was widely recognized as an unfortunate byproduct. Email communications, and some internet communications can be launched instantaneously with the press of a button.  It’s not like a letter that sits around to be mailed the next day when more sober instincts might prevail.  With the disinhibition of not dealing with another person face to face, communications can be extra harsh, especially if exchanges back and forth escalate into a “flame war.”  Even face-to-face communication can be hard; you have to realize and know what you want to say; you have to say what you actually mean; other people have to hear what you actually say and they have to understand, without misinterpretation or incorrect filled-in suppositions, what you actually mean.  All of these things are harder over the internet without all the moment-to-moment micro-adjustments you can make speaking to somebody face to face as you intuitively sense from another’s physical body in the room responding, the ongoing success as opposed to misdirection of your communication.

Added to this is the way that our ongoing fear-based enforced physical separation from others can enhance our suspicions of others.  We walk through the streets now socially distancing each other and maintaining six-feet gaps like wary gunslingers in a Hollywood western.  Fear turns on our lizard brains, and these distances can enhance the instincts toward unhealthy “othering.” This comes just at a time when the obvious solution to get through our current crisis is more community cross-support for resilience.  Covid-19 could not be a more perfect and obvious “my health is your health/your health is my health” argument for Medicare for all.  With massive, nationwide layoffs because of the Covid-19 health crisis, millions of Americans are now losing their “if you like your private employer health plan, you can keep it,” health insurance right at the time when they need it most.  This is notwithstanding Joe Biden’s very recent statement that if the Democrats pass Medicare for all he will veto it if he is elected president. . .

In many ways, Americans are now in a particularly vulnerable time if anyone wants to deploy the typical kind of divide and conquer tactics that neutralize the public’s ability to organize for common goals and make our democracy work.  One of the most valuable big picture overviews available right now about the way things stand is Naomi Klein's Intercept video about the fork in the road decisions ahead of us as we face the Coronavirus crisis (Coronavirus Capitalism — and How to Beat It): Either we could go the route of improving and making our society more resilient the way FDR did in dealing with the Depression of the 1930s, or, instead, another round of disaster capitalism maneuvers could be effected.  We know that the 2008 financial crisis was mishandled by pumping money into wealthy investment funds, banks, and corporations at exactly the time that asset prices were low and temporarily suppressed, prices for things like the homes of people in the Main Street economy, and those assets and homes were then bought up by those hedge funds, banks and corporations. . .  It was one of the greatest wealth transfers ever, increasing wealth inequality in America.  Plus it was paid for with taxpayer money.  The people who lost their homes paid the taxes that financed those tilted economy buy ups that deprived them of ownership.

It's exceedingly hard to maintain a big picture consciousness when news about the virus is frenetically reported with rotating reports of the very latest statistics in different countries, different cities, different regions of different countries, the world, and then starting over again at the beginning for updates because by the time the end of the list is reached, the numbers have already up-ticked.  Alternatively, a fairly good big picture overview doesn't require drowning in the latest moment to moment statistical data: our health care system is at the point of being overwhelmed, the United States is in many ways inexcusably ill prepared for such a pandemic; and, additionally, we are not doing many of the sensible things we could be doing, and yes. . .  people should be cautious  One day, a time may come when we look back at 2020 and say, "that was a very peculiar election–how do that ever happen?"; and if, as we might  hope, the virus finally exits center stage and exact memories of it recede just the way we now have to work to remind ourselves of the 1918 flu (which occurred during the Midterm elections of President Woodrow Wilson's wartime presidential tenure), we may answer: "Oh, that's right, that was during the coronavirus crisis when we were so all distracted and worried about other things."

The coronavirus crisis feels a lot like the 2008 financial crisis and 9/11 wrapped up into one.  It is worth remembering how with the distractions of 9/11 (and the tag-team Anthrax attacks that closely followed), we, as a nation, just as with the 2008 financial crisis, also made a series of really bad decisions as we were distracted from big picture truths.

There are silver linings to our new world.  Families where parents are now working at home are spending more time together, building stronger bonds.  They are experiencing the opposite effect of the separation and isolation that is making our larger world feel so relentlessly dystopian these days.  Some may even experience the new quieting down as meditative, and it may feel as if there is also some shift away from things materialistic.  We may feel closer to some essential truths about what is truly valuable.  That is not to say that all family groups have equal tools to deal with what could feel like a pressure cooker of forced togetherness.

Not everybody has a family that they live with, and that can be unfortunate.  For many their sense ongoing family and human togetherness was achieved by getting out in the world and physically spending time communing with other people.  The virtual is an inferior substitute: Before the virus ever arrived, it has been noted how often people who spend a great deal of their time on platforms like Facebook for their companionship and for their “friends” can wind up depressed.

One last good thing to note is that it does seem that we are, for the most part, presently being good to each other despite the human separations being forced on us and the digital substitutions being offered for our existence.  Hopefully, still being good to each other, we will all be communally together again, in a real physical sense, soon.

The Clinton And The Trump Investigations And Impeachments: Both Following The Same Formula For Division And Subtraction By Distraction?

I don’t know about you, but I had a striking revelation: The Clinton and the Trump presidential impeachments and the theatrically dramatic investigations accompanying them were remarkably the same.  In each case, the news media and our congress obsessed and transfixed for months on an investigation that seemed giant, sensational, and exhaustive, yet in each case was focused on something largely irrelevant to what was actually there to be investigated.  Also, in each case, the relatively trivial offenses selected to be focused on were perfect to foment and stoke distracting Red Team/Blue Team division.

I first realized the strange kinship of the two impeachments/investigations when I was reading a Whitney Webb article.  It was the fourth article in Ms. Webb's MintPress News series on pedophile sex ring operator and apparent blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein.  This is the in depth, connect-the-dots series that has attracted Ms. Webb so much attention.  The series was extra-remarkable when it got started getting real attention because Ms. Webb started it before Epstein’s provocatively mysterious death.–   The fourth article in the series, the first written after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, had me thinking, “reeling” is a better word, about how there was so much about the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, that Whitney Webb was writing about that was never investigated, never surfaced as part of any formal investigation, stuff that obviously should have been investigated. . .  But I remembered the Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation that turned into the Monica Lewinsky scandal based impeachment and trial of Clinton.  Hmm.
                                           
That’s when I first thought about the commonality of the Clinton and Trump impeachments/investigations.  I don’t know if it vexed you, but for me it was excruciating that there is so much to investigate about Trump, so much that he could be impeached for (violations of the emoluments clause in the running of his hotels and resorts, diverting money appropriated for other things into his “wall,” willful violations of international treaties, assassination of Soleimani, putting a fox in charge of the hen house of every government regulatory agency chartered to protect the public), and yet the Democrats ignored all the potentially strong bipartisan issues challenging Trump and they impeached him for something totally different. 

Ignoring strong potentially bipartisan grounds for impeaching Trump while going after Trump on weak ones, the Democrats weaken anyone’s future ability to impeach and convict Trump on the much stronger, valid grounds available; “What doesn’t kill him, makes him stronger.”  They probably weaken the ability of anyone to impeach and convict any president in the future.  Beforehand, the Democrats notably put their energy into a rather bogus “Russiagate” investigation.  That’s now morphed, somewhat seamlessly, into a Ukraingate investigation. Of all possible things, the Democrats decided to impeach Trump for steps Trump took to surface corrupt activities of Joe Biden and his son in the Ukraine.

Are you wondering about the probable depths of the Bidens’ Ukranian corruption?  If you're doubting that it’s a significant issue, I suspect that, unserved by corporate mass media, or at least the Blue media, there’s much you haven't yet paid attention to.  To catch up, I recommend to you some documentary segments “UkraineGate – Inconvenient Facts” (the first is “A Not So ‘Solid’ Prosecutor”) produced out of France.  It’s available through partnering work done with Consortium News, for anyone who wants to get extra educated as they indulge their wondering about whether the Bidens, father and son, behaved in a manner worthy of a corruption investigation that would look into how, when Joe Bidden was in charge of Ukrainian affairs for the Obama administration following the United States’ participation in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, Hunter Bidden, his son, got a very hard-to-explain, almost insanely lucrative five-year appointment to Burisma Holdings, a huge Ukrainian natural gas company.  Joe Biden was thereafter, still theoretically working of the U.S. taxpayers, when he was involved in removing and replacing the Ukrainian prosecutor in charge of investigations of that gas company’s business.

It’s possible you’re a Blue-team loyal Democrat who is in line with the feeling that Trump should absolutely not have tried to surface matters for investigation about the Bidens– If so, I suggest you try turning these things around and imagine how a Red-team loyal Republican might scoff hearing about the refusal of Democrats to allow the Bidens to be called as witnesses concerning the corruption Trump says he wanted to surface.  If impeachment witnesses are, indeed, important, why not welcome these witnesses? . .   Or just imagine that it was a yet-to-take-office Democratic president trying to surface, for better investigation, matters involving corruption during a prior Republican administration, perhaps Trump’s family reaping spoils in a country where we helped depose the government.  That country could be Bolivia, which is another country with natural gas resources likely to now be privatized.  Or possibly it could be Venezuela, an oil rich country the Trump administration is making concerted attempts to overthrow.

The point is this: Was Trump’s interest in seeing the Biden’s Ukranian activities investigated strong grounds for impeachment, or just an issue guaranteed to cause people to divisively side more strongly with contradictory outrage being expressed, respectively, in turn by either the Blue Team or the Red Team?

Now let’s go back in time to the Clintons.

Reading the Whitney Webb article with so many unsavory facts and allegations about the Clintons in one place, made me think about how I felt when Ken Starr, having supposedly started with Whitewater, was relentless pursuing President Bill Clinton for not telling the frank truth about his philandering sex life.  I remember, at that time, honing in on the principle that you should investigate the crime, not investigate the man.  That’s because in this complicated world if you selectively devote enormous resources to investigate just about any single individual there is probably something you can find that that individual did wrong if that is your intent.  And it seemed that was exactly what Ken Starr was doing.

I remember how back at the time in the 1990s, I felt increasingly aligned with, and defensive of Bill Clinton, because I felt he was being persecuted not prosecuted.  At that time, it forced me to ask whether we needed to know about and judge peoples’ personal sex lives as a predicate for determining their suitability to hold a governing office.  My answer on this subject was basically, no, with some exceptions.  In particular, I felt those exceptions pertained to those individuals in politics who were hypocritically trying to dictate and moralize about the sex lives of others by holding up rules they didn’t follow themselves: I was keenly aware that top Republicans prosecuting the Clinton impeachment, including three Republican House Speakers at the time, Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, were all involved in their own sex scandals.

I wasn’t the only one reacting to the Clinton impeachment this way.  Democrats picked up seats in Congress as the probable result of the impeachment.  The impeachment of Clinton launched MoveOn as an organization to raise money for candidates opposing Republicans.  Bill Clinton’s sex life and the potentially hypocrisy of some Democrats seeming to defend even its predatory aspects, helped build up both sides.  MSNBC, only a few year old at the time was able, as pointed out by Matt Taibbi, to build up a Blue-Team type audience reporting on the Clinton impeachment hearings– It was an alternative to Fox, which was relishing a semen-stained dress.  Matt Taibbi points out that, “Fox struck gold with the Lewinsky story and the Clinton impeachment.”  Both “sides” were inflamed to more Red Team/Blue Team rooting by the issue.

Similarly, today, even as Blue Team-rooting Democrats were cheering the Trump impeachment or coaxed to do so, indications are that the Democrat’s flailing impeachment of Trump is driving Trump’s ratings up.
    
Flash back to the Clintons: After the Ken Starr investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton culminating in the targeting of Clinton for impeachment for quibbling about what “is” meant when he was uncomfortably being questioned about his sex life, I felt as if the Clintons had been thoroughly investigated.  They must have thoroughly investigated, or so it seemed.  Ken Starr spent massively on his investigation of the Clintons.  Starr is estimated to have spent between $70 million and $80 million on his investigation (with all Clinton investigations combined, it may have been $92 million), and didn’t it seem that Starr was obviously stretching to hit the Clintons with whatever he could dig up, even it was something flimsy about Clinton not honestly answering questions concerning his sex life?  To appreciate whether that was a lot of resources devoted to an investigation, consider that the entire 9/11 investigation, the investigation of the event that launched multiple wars and trillions in spending, was initially budgeted just $3 million. $11 to $15 million was what was finally spent on that investigation; it was obvious it was to keep it on a short leash.
                               
Fast forward to find we have Trump in office.  We have another investigation that involves headlines awesomely plastered everywhere, Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation.  Again we sense that enormous resources are being devoted to the delving.  This time though the investigation actually costs the taxpayers a little less.  Although Trump tweets and Giuliani as his lawyer asserts that the Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation is costing $40 or more, the actual cost of it, coming out gradually, over time is probably in the mid-30s.  But then, of course, the “Russiagate” investigation is followed up with Ukraingate from which its is financially distinct, although they get thematically linked ('election help for Trump from foreign governments that use Cyrillic alphabets').  While we had the spectacle of what was referred to as the Trump-accusing “whistleblower” in Ukraingate (probably not an individual, but a CIA team effort), which must have involved some inevitable investigative followup, there are no figures yet offered for the cost of the impeachment investigation to add to the perhaps $35 million Mueller spent on Russiagate.

Certainly, from all the headlines and the leaks reported by Rachel Maddow, the New York Times, et al, there again had to be a feeling engendered that the investigation of Trump was thorough. Furthermore, the mainstream press assured us ahead of time that Robert Mueller could be relied upon for a credible investigation. As just a sample, the New York Times said Mueller was “a former federal prosecutor with an unblemished reputation” whose appointment would “alleviate uncertainty about the government’s ability to investigate the questions surrounding the Trump campaign and the Russians,” that he was “hailed by Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, who view him as one of the most credible law enforcement officials in the country.”  We were told Mr. Mueller’s “record, character, and trustworthiness have been lauded for decades by Republicans and Democrats alike.”

Accepting any assurance of the expected validity of any of Mueller’s investigations is ill advised . . .  While the Times was writing about about Mueller’s “unblemished reputation” and sterling qualifications to be the Russiagate Special Prosecutor on May 17, 2017, just four years prior, May 9, 2013, you would have been reading in the Times the prediction that Mueller’s legacy would be unforgettably besmirched by Mueller’s botched investigation of tips the FBI was given ahead of time concerning the Boston Marathon Bombing.

If you review the entirety of Mueller’s career, you will find that Mueller’s forte is, in fact, craftily botching investigations to reach incorrect and misleading results.  The investigations he is involved in regularly focus on, pursue, and indict the wrong people for the wrong things.  Researching and writing about his record, I discovered over a dozen extraordinarily high profile cases and investigations (BCCI, Iragate, Iran-Contra, Anthrax, Enron, Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie, Whitey Bulger, Khobar Towers Bombing, Timothy J. McVeigh, 9/11, etc.) running from the 1990s consistently to the present where his results were conspicuously suspect.  At one time or another the inadequacy of various investigations were all covered by the mainstream corporate media, but the media usually has a conveniently short memory when they want to report about Mueller’s record.  The actual facts are that Mueller doesn’t seem to have very much in his record to boast of where the results of his investigations, when examined, did not seem to involve misdirection.

There was, of course, at the end, the publicly conducted jousting of Mueller William Barr that grabbed extra attention.  That jousting made Mueller’s Russiagate investigation efforts to `nail’ Trump seem sincere, but it helps to set aside that distraction if you know that Mueller and Barr are actually good friends who have worked together, often closely, on many of Mueller’s misdirecting investigations in the past.

As for Ken Starr, the Clinton Special Prosecutor, Starr just showed up as part of Trump’s legal impeachment defense team to make news by not-so-adroitly reversing himself on the subject of whether the country should pursue “divisive” impeachments. Should we consider Starr’s investigation of Clinton any more credible in terms of it's being on target in terms of what really needed to be investigated?   Starr is also very good at ignoring things and not investigating what needs to be investigated.  In 2016 Starr was fired from his job as president of Baylor University, accused of ignoring a fairly massive scandal about sexual assaults on his campus.  How ironic, after going after Clinton for sexual conduct issues.  Ironic too that the president Starr would choose to defend is the pussy-grabbing Trump . . .

 . . Starr was also part of the legal defense team for pedophile sex ring operator and apparent blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, which brings up back around to uninvestigated cover-ups.  It also bring us back around to that fourth article in Whitney Webb’s Jeffrey Epstein series that laid out so much damaging information about the Clintons in relation thereto.
   
That then is what I believe deserves noticing: The Trump and the Clinton presidential impeachments and related investigations resemble each other so closely, that it is almost as if the Clinton impeachment and investigation was used as the playbook for what we just witnessed with Trump.  It’s the same subtraction, division, distraction formula with the same results:

    •    Start with important serious complex matters worth investigating, that would need to be investigated in order to hold the powerful to account.
    •    Subtract out for investigation only some things that are trivial and not worthy grounds for impeaching a president.
    •    Have those things that you investigate be sensational and controversial to ensure escalating division of the populace from differing Red Team/Blue Team perspectives.
    •    Have a big showy investigation where it looks like all the stops have being pulled out and the investigators are really anxious to “get” the president any way they can.

And what you get is:

    •    A more divided populace, pushed more into the deepest corners of the Red Team/Blue Team factionalism that helps ensure, fuel, finance and perpetuate the duopoly that traps and controls the electorate.  In this regard it is important to note that factionalism pushing people into rooting emotionally for the Red Team or the Blue Team, respectively, turns off critical thinking and analysis.  Additionally, it causes people not to think in terms of the many common interests they share would otherwise naturally prevail.
    •    A public misguided by its strong impression that everything that needed to be investigated has been delved into deeply and relentlessly, that no stone has been left unturned.  The public thinks that, like in a court of law, there has been a contest that ensures this, not that it amounts to a certain form of collusion.
    •    A government that is even less subject to being held to account than it was before.