Corporate Federalism: Did AOL Miss an Opportunity?

Citing twelve past and present AOL employees, The Wall Street Journal characterized AOL in 2011 as a “culture of clashing fiefs and personalities created by a rapid series of acquisitions that haven’t jelled.”[1] Just in managing the likes of Michael Arrington and Arianna Huffington, Tim Armstrong had his hands full as CEO. Both Arrington and Huffington were strong defenders of editorial independence in their respective units. Arrington started a venture capital firm partly financed by AOL to invest in tech firms even as Arrington’s division at AOL, TechCrunch, wrote on technology firms. The problems for AOL went well beyond acquiescing in a structural conflict of interest of TechCrunch writing on particular tech companies while investing in some of them but not others. A person familiar with AOL said that Armstrong “had a macro vision that was right but didn’t have the right plan to implement it.”[2] That is to say, his visionary leadership was good but his strategic management was bad. Strategic leadership demands better. AOL may have been a good candidate for a federal system of governance because the publishing units needed some autonomy even at the cost of foregone corporate cooperation. 

In a federal system adapted to a corporation, each division or acquisition is like a semi-sovereign state with some autonomy from the general government, which includes the board of directors and the CEO. Were the board by analogy the constitutional court rather than part of the federal government, then it would be too easy for conflicts of interest to be exploited at the expense of division autonomy. This arrangement does not compromise the control that comes with property rights, for the shareholders would still be able to vote on major conflicts wherein a division claims that its autonomy is being compromised by a CEO or board.

The federation form—similar to the Japanese conglomerate “family” of businesses centered around a banking division though with each division having some autonomy from headquarter—is perhaps ideally suited to a publishing company in which pressure exists to tailor articles to particular companies favored financially by a division or the publishing company as a whole. In other words, reconciling editorial freedom (and credibility) with the synergy possible from corporate coordination (otherwise why make the acquisitions in the first place?) may be well-suited to the federal form wherein the parts and whole each of some areas of autonomy from the other. The limited autonomy itself must be in the stockholders’ long-term financial interest; this is not difficult, as sacrificing editorial freedom for immediate financial gain is typically detrimental in the long run. 

1. Jessica E. Vascellaro and Emily Steel, “Culture Clashes Tear at AOL,” Wall Street Journal, September 10-11, 2011. 

2. Ibid.

Taxation and Economic Inequality

The top 1% of U.S. taxpayers had 19.4% of the total income in 2007 and paid 28.1% of all federal taxes. In 1987, the top 1% had had 11.2% of the total income and paid 16.2% of all federal taxes. The share of total income going to the wealthy (income over $353,000 in 1987) and the share of federal income taxes they paid increased. That the poverty rate hit 15% in 2011 while the real wages of the middle and lower classes were back to mid-1990s levels suggests that the rich were getting richer as the poor were getting poorer; income and wealth inequalities were increasing. Differential impacts of a taxation regime can have an impact on a growing inequality, and thus on whether a society should adjust its tax structure. 

Although the share of taxes increased between 1987 and 2007, the 15% rate on dividends and capital gains put in place during the second George W. Bush administration meant that at the time, “many wealthy Americans [paid] considerably less because their earnings [were] derived from dividends or capital gains.”[1] 

Also, advantageous itemized deductions are more likely to be useful to a wealthy taxpayer, enabling a lower effective rate lower than that of a middle-class taxpayer. Few if any low-income taxpayers benefit from itemizing deductions. It could be that the standard deduction (and exemptions) are not sufficient to reflect the actual and necessary expenses—especially relative to income. So to claim that the bottom 1% should pay the same share of taxes as the top 1% ignores the fundamental difference between surplus and necessity. The symmetry of a bell-shaped curve does not apply because the incomes at the respective tails are qualitatively (i.e., not just quantitatively) different (e.g., relative to survival).

As for the effective rates, the unjust inversion with the middle class is not universally the case. For example, the top 400 taxpayers saw their effective federal income tax rate drop from 29% in 1993 to 18% in 2008. By comparison, households with income between $50,000 and $75,000 had an effective rate of 15% in 2008. These are averages, so there were doubtless cases of inversion where middle class taxpayers had a higher effective rate than wealthy tax payers. Depending on restoring justice to such cases does not go far enough in deficit reduction. That is to say, as just as it is, making sure millionaires are at least at the effective rate of the middle class may not go far enough, considering the seriousness and magnitudes of the U.S. deficit and accumulated debt. Given the sheer magnitudes, those who can afford to contribute more should be required to do so. It is doubtful that merely correcting for the effective rate injustice on a case by case basis would go far enough.

In 2009, for instance, 238,000 households filed returns with adjusted gross incomes of at least $1 million. Twenty-five percent of them paid an effective federal income tax rate of less than 15 percent, and 1,470 paid no federal income tax at all. Although the money involved dwarfs the number of taxpayers concerned, focusing on this “effective rate” injustice need not blind us to the fact that the increase to the treasury would fall well short of what is necessary to eliminate a deficit of over $1 trillion (not to mention paying down a debt roughly equal to the annual GNP of the U.S.). A macro justice matter concerns the role of the wealthy in reducing the deficits and debt—beyond the question of effective rates to address the inconvenience to the wealthy versus the pain from cuts to the poor.

To claim that the effective tax rate on the top 1% or even 5% of all taxpayers should be higher than the rates on lower incomes is not “class warfare.” Neither is the claim that those who can afford to contribute more money to reduce the deficit (and debt). The notion that those who can afford to contribute more follows from the principle that those who have means, rather than those who do not, should be relied on disproportionately, given the qualitative difference between surplus and sustenance. To suggest that everyone except those who are able should sacrifice to reduce a deficit is antipodal to the ethical principle of fairness. In other words, it is unfair to try to squeeze blood from a turnip while leaving the watermelons alone.

As easy as it may be to get bogged down on the percentages and dollar amounts, charts and graphs, pros and cons, the debate about taxation, spending cuts, and deficit reduction comes down to values. This is why the debate can get so heated, only we don’t take the cue and cut to the chase. We are perhaps too instrumental and utility-oriented; we miss the broader question of what we as a society value—who we are—things that are even if we don’t make it explicit. I submit, therefore, that the final paragraph below is much more significant than any of the figures and analysis above. Statistics can be manipulated to support virtually any point, whereas values go to the core in defining a society and its members.

A society that cuts its way to eliminating a deficit is saying something quite different regarding itself than a society that includes a solidarity tax on the wealthy. Solidarity itself can mean different things to different people, particularly when self-interest is consulted. How do we weigh society as dog-eat-dog relative to society as solidarity? In other words, is solidarity something more than society as an aggregation? Is it ethical to exempt the rich from paying more while making cuts to the sustenance of the poor? 

1.  David Kocieniewski, “A Tax Others Embrace, U.S. Opposes,” The New York Times, September 21, 2011. 

Bank One: Adding to Systemic Risk after the Financial Crisis of 2008

The financial crisis in September 2008 was indeed a crisis, and yet it is stunning how soon the American financial sector sought to undermine governmental efforts to guard against another such crisis. Exactly three years after the crisis, Republicans in Congress  repeatedly invoked the Dodd-Frank Act’s 848-page length and rules on trading derivatives and swaps as examples of government overreach at the expense of much-needed jobs. “Dodd-Frank is adding safety margins to the banking system,” according to Douglas Elliott at the Brookings Institution. “That may mean somewhat fewer jobs in normal years, in exchange for the benefit of avoiding something like what we just went through in the financial crisis, which was an immense job killer.”[1] To scrap the new law in order to save few jobs would thus be short-sighted even with regard to jobs. Wall Street's concern, however, was not jobs, but, rather, the loss of profit off high-risk trading. 

The banks had grown used to the higher risk and were not about to do without it in spite of its risk to the economy. The Dodd-Frank law “aims to rein in abusive lending practices and high-risk bets on complex derivative securities that nearly drove the banking system off a cliff.”[2] The banks themselves could not be relied on to forestall such “cliff-diving” because it could be so profitable. Nor could the banks be expected to look out for the financial system as a whole in the face of such profitability as the financial derivative instruments were making.

For example, at the Federal Reserve hearing on September 20, 2011 on Capital One’s proposed takeover of ING, John Finneran, Capital One’s general counsel, said the “acquisition of ING Direct will further reduce, rather than increase, any risk to the financial system.”[3] The combination would have around $200 billion in deposits (moving the bank from No. 8 to No. 5 in the U.S.),  however, which raised “questions about the deal’s impact on customers and the broader economy.”[4] John Finneran’s claim of lower risk thus required further support. To be sure, he did argue that the deal would “not lessen competition or result in any undue concentration of resources.”[5] He was thinking in terms of restraint of trade more so than systemic risk. Regarding the latter, John Taylor of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, pointed to the risky subprime loans in the bank’s credit card portfolio. Before the hearing, he had asked, “We already have four too-big-to-fail banks. Why make a fifth?”[6]

That the proposal to carve up the four $1 trillion plus banks was summarily dismissed as Dodd-Frank was being written (with the help of the banking lobby, which Sen. Durbin said still owned Congress) was apparently not enough; preventing an increase in the number of mega-banks too big to fail would still go too far, at least from the vantage point of the banks and, presumably, the Republican party as well. This view was expressed by Dan Tarullo, a Federal Reserve governor. “While Congress instructed us to consider the extent to which a proposed acquisition would pose a greater risk to financial stability, it clearly did not instruct us to reject an acquisition simply because there would be any increase in such risks.”[7] I contend that Tartullo’s stance is wrongheaded and even dangerous.

The continued existence of banks with assets of over $1 trillion allows for enough systemic risk to tank the system. Increasing such risk by permitting Bank One to continue “amassing a big national banking franchise” ignored the risk of there being too much systemic risk in the system already. It is highly unlikely that merely increasing capital requirements for the biggest banks and providing for their possible liquidations reduced the systemic risk in the system to a tolerable level. Therefore, adding more systemic risk to the system should have been forbidden.  

1. Edward Wyatt, “Dodd-Frank Act a Favorite Target for Republicans Laying Blame,” New York Times, September 21, 2011. 
2. Ibid.
3. Ben Protess, “Capital One Denies ING Takeover Would Make It ‘Too Big to Fail’,” New York Times, September 21, 2011. 
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Wyatt, "Dodd Frank."

American Federalism Eclipsed by an Ideal of Democracy: Education Over Immigration as a Constitutional Problem

The U.S. Constitution includes immigration as one of the listed (i.e., enumerated) powers of the federal government. Education is not such a power; hence it resides with the States. Historically, the accumulation of power by the federal government has involved taking areas from the States even though those areas are not listed as federal powers. As a result, American federalism has shifted increasingly toward a consolidation of power at the federal level. Among other means, Congresses and U.S. presidents have used the power of the purse to gain control from the States. Education is a case in point, whether elementary, secondary, or higher education. That the U.S. Government has had trouble controlling the country's southern border with Mexico suggests that maybe adding education has come at the expense of the added attention and effort that could have been put on immigration. In business terms, an opportunity cost (i.e., the cost of foregone benefits) comes with each additional federalized area. U.S. President Obama on education presents us with a case in point. 

“Our country used to have the world’s largest proportion of young people with a college degree,” the president said in 2011. “We now rank 16th. I don’t like being 16th; I like being No. 1.”[1]  Liking being at the highest rank is only natural. Wanting a more educated people is laudable, especially because an more educated citizenry is more likely to be able to maintain a republic instead of falling prey to "fake news" and a deceitful demagogue. 

By 2020, the influx of educated suburbanites from other States was changing Arizona politics, for example. A candidate for sheriff of Phoenix's county who had campaigned on standing up "to the mobs," with peaceful protests being included as if they were inherently dangerous rather than a constitutional right worthy of protection, lost. In truth, the mobs consisted of all of the uneducated residents--a large group, and thus with the numbers to vote in office-holders, given Arizona's rank of 49th out of the 50 States on elementary and secondary education in 2019. By 2020, the influx of new, more educated blood in Phoenix and some of its suburbs (not Glendale or Mesa) was beginning to compensate for the power of the uneducated in the State.

As laudable as more education is especially in the backward States, the ability of the U.S. Government to intervene comes with a cost in terms of federalism sliding into consolidated governance of a empire-scale country, which is inherently heterogenous (i.e., has differences within). One size does not always fit all in cases such as the U.S. and E.U. because the states are different culturally. My point is that to forestall consolidation in order to protect the checks and balances made possible only in a federal system. 

Education is problematic precisely because allowing the federal government in to shore up States such as Arizona puts one more nail in the coffin of American federalism, yet such States would otherwise continue to suffer from the uneducated being able to determine who holds public office. It is a paradox actually, in that the poorer, uneducated citizens are less able or inclined to hold their elected officials accountable between elections. In Arizona, for instance, people complain about "the police state" of nightly surveillance by police helicopters especially in the middle- and lower-class areas of the Phoenix metropolitan area, yet without defending their right to peaceable enjoyment. Yet those same voters vote into office the "law and order" authoritarian type of person who is inclined to take liberties with innocent people, being ignorant of the fact that even innocent people do not like being intimidated as if that were are necessary deterrent. 

In 2011, President Obama's visit to a city's school sent a good message wherein education should be valued, but it is also significant that the president overlooked the fact that education is not among the areas granted to the U.S. Government by the U.S. Constitution. He could have resolved this tension by urging that Americans urge their respective state officials to improve their education systems. Yet there would still be States like Arizona in which too many people believe that taxing constitutes stealing.

It is not as though the president of the United States had a lack of things needing his attention within the enumerated powers of the U.S. Government. In fact, state officials of some border States were stepping in to adequately enforce immigration law because federal officials were too ineffectual. That the federal government fought such assistance while continuing to encroach on State domains such as education evinces a desire to have it all; that is, a desire at the federal level to consolidate power rather than respect federal constitutional boundaries (as well as international boundaries such as borders). It was as if the person in charge of an association’s club house were resisting cleaning help by some of the members while going into their houses to try to clean them. Somehow the common sense advice to get one's own house in order before trying to order other houses, which is so needed to restore American federalism, has been missed at the federal level. 

To be sure, it is not as though the Obama administration was so consumed with visiting local schools that it would not have time or resources with which to better enforce immigration law. It is rather the accumulation of areas that are not included in the enumerated federal powers that has left the U.S. Government vulnerable to not doing enough in its own areas. 

Interestingly, while the president was acting as parent-in-chief at a local (rather than federal) school, his administration lost a case in federal court against Alabama’s immigration law enforcing the federal law. Among other things, the Alabama law “nullifies any contracts entered into by an illegal immigrant.”[2] Another section “forbids any transaction between an illegal immigrant and any division of the state,” and still another section “requires elementary and secondary schools to determine the immigration status of incoming students.”[3] Nothing here violates or nullifies federal law; in fact, Alabama was helping the U.S. Government with its task. In the E.U., where most power still resides at the State level, it is common for the state governments to be required to implement E.U. directives. In the U.S., where the federal level has accumulated so much to do, it makes even more sense that state governments would be required to do more of the legislating. "Congress is behaving like a state legislature," Justice Sandra O'Conner once told me when I asked her about the role of the federal government in eclipsing federalism by instituting a system of consolidated power.[4]

1.  Mark Landler, “Obama Urges Students to Set Their Sights on College,” New York Times, September 29, 2011. 

2. Campbell Robertson, “Alabama Wins in Ruling On Its Immigration Law,” New York Times, September 29, 2011. 

3. Ibid. 

4. Sandra J. O'Connor, Personal Conversation, Yale University. 

The Right of Political Protest in the U.S.: Nullified in the Outback by Intimidation

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of Grievances.” Peaceable protest, even to protest a government or an official thereof, has come to be regarded as a staple of American democracy. In practice, however, the right can be eviscerated such that peaceful protesting is simply not worth the trouble. Such trouble can be orchestrated by a police force or even a government within the United States.
Implicit in the right to protest is the value put on tolerating the expression of contrary opinions. Conservative and progressive views, even those of racists and anarchists, respectively, are generally accorded the right to peaceably protest in a public way. If a State is sufficiently one-sided, however, public officials, including governors, majors, and police chiefs, can reflect the dominant attitude of residents that protests on behalf certain political, economic, or social ideologies should not be allowed. If they must be allowed, then massive shows of police force can—it is assumed--legitimately be used to intimidate the protesters.

The placement of the three posters illustrates pictorially that business and authoritarian political interests can co-exist comfortably in a broader political coalition. In Nazi Germany, for instance, the industrialists were part of Hitler's authoritarian political coalition. Besides receiving purchase orders from a state that is able to resist popular calls for government spending, business likes the political stability that a "law and order" police-state can provide. 

In Arizona, for example, prior to the 2020 election, a conservative candidate for sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area, displayed signs containing the imperative, “Stand Up to the Mobs!” Just above that line was another imperative—that the laws be enforced. Presumably the unenforced laws on car-emission limits and mask requirements on public transportation were not on the candidate’s mind. Presumably he was not planning on holding the transit authority accountable for allowing passengers without masks to ride the buses and light rail. A supervisor at Metro Valley told me by phone at the time that the county law (and ordinances of the cities) that face masks must be worn on public transportation does not have “legal force” because it is just a requirement. Stunned, I did not point out that her company was in violation of the requirement because even bus drivers did not have to wear masks; I had already investigated the strange messages coming out of that company, such as, “Masks are required and we will allow passengers to board without wearing them.”
The candidate for sheriff was likely referring back to the protests against police brutality (otherwise known as abuses of power). That he did not use the word, “Rioters,” instead of “Mobs” implies that he was including peaceable protests too. Given the bad connotation of the word, “Mobs,” as “a large and disorderly crowd of people” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a negative attitude toward at least certain peaceful protests can be inferred. I had heard enough Arizona residents conflate “liberal” peaceful protests with riots to know what the candidate meant by mobs. “They are all violent,” one conservative resident insisted to me as I thought of the state’s pre-college education rating of 49^th out of the 50 States.
A few years after the 2016 presidential election, some students of Arizona State University told me that protests against Donald Trump had not really been allowed on campus. One student even observed that Arizona does not tolerate “liberal” protests. Besides the errant assumption that any mob of people is bound to become violent (which in turn rests on an extremely negative view of human nature rivaling that of John Calvin), anger against “liberals,” which was clearly evident locally, was likely behind the excessive police force designed to intimidate even peaceful protests.
With ASU police regularly staked out in jeeps parked on sidewalks and even academic courtyards, an excessive show of force has been the authoritarians’ tactic of choice to intimidate protesters even if they happened to be 20 students in the Global Politics of Human Rights class whose final project was a class protest on campus on April 13, 2017. The students protested against Trump’s policies on immigration, LGBT rights, women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, and even the prison system. 

The class was fluid in its movements, rather than being intent on blocking a sidewalk. (Source: Connor Bolget of The Republic)

As vaguely reported by a local newspaper, “At one point, Arizona State University personnel asked the group to relocate in order to stop blocking the sidewalk. Protesters then stood in a staggered line, with about a foot between each person, instead of standing shoulder to shoulder. Campus police then were called to the scene, as the protesters changed from holding signs to linking arms, walking back and fourth [sic] in front of the grassy area of Hayden Lawn.”[1] The word lawn is important, as the area is a large square of grass with sidewalks on the periphery.
Who were the opaquely labeled university personnel? In addition to the routine police presence on the campus, students working essentially as police aides typically have the campus covered (even sidewalk intersection to intersection). I have seen those security students keeping a particular eye on outdoor “political” tables near the student union building. It is possible that those student-security personnel notified the campus police of the class’s final project as a protest, which the police would have understood as such rather than as an academic project.

The walkie-talkie-clad "eyes and ears" for the campus police are ubiquitous on the main ASU campus--sometimes at every sidewalk-intersection even as observant police jeeps are stationed during the day on sidewalks and even academic courtyards. 

Did the university personnel and police over-react? The local newspaper reported, “Passers-by had some difficulties finding their way around the linked demonstrators, so ASU’s campus police stepped in to give a second warning, this time directly” to the professor.”[2]  That the protesters were few (20 with some add-ons) and were generally fluid (i.e., mobile) suggests that both the university personnel and the caller over-reacted. It would not be a crisis for by-passers (especially students) to walk on the grass, especially at that square. The police stepped in to give a second warning, so who gave the first? The student security workers? Given that students ordinarily walked on the grass and the small group was mobile, were two warnings really necessary? Should a university police force be able to interfere with a class project without permission from an upper-level academic administer? I suspect that the police took it upon themselves to threaten the professor as if she deserved to be arrested because students had to make a slight detour on grassy square. I also suspect that the police viewed the event as a political protest rather than as an academic project. That it was the latter means that the police should not have intervened without the permission of an academic administrator. Instead, the incident reflected the local culture wherein mobs protest and protests can be expected to turn violent. With such a negative view of protests even as a class project, it is easy to understand why threats and intimidation would be used with impunity.
Hence even the people in the peaceful protests against abuse-of-power by the police in Phoenix during the summer of 2020 (as distinct from the riots, which rightly have no constitutional protections) had to contend with massive police shows of force. Even a small protest on behalf of Ryan Whitaker had to put up with a police helicopter circling overhead as if twenty people might suddenly lose control of themselves and go on a rampage. A resident who lived near a park where protests against police violence took place told me that even peaceful protests walking to the park had to contend with an overwhelming police presence. I was talking to the other Midwesterner after a police car hit a parking lot curb as the police employee quickly swerved closely by me as I was walking from the main library, which was closed. No one was in the nearby park or even in the library’s parking lot that early afternoon during a weekday. Even though protests were taking place nightly, I contend that the police were over-reacting to one person walking through the parking lot. The aggressive driving was totally uncalled for, and yet the police employee likely, given the culture there, regarded it as measured rather than hyperactive. The underlying assumption, which I had heard from both local police and residents, is that any grouping of citizens in public is likely to turn violent without intimidation from an exaggerated show of force. That very assumption is what puts Arizona at odds with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
During that summer, the city’s mayor was bragging about how minimal the protests were there compared with those in other big cities in other States. If that differential was the result of intimidating peaceful protesters under the subterfuge that they would inevitably become violent because mobs are unruly, then the “success” came by trampling on the right of the people to assemble peaceably, which means without feeling intimidated. I would not call that success.

---

1. Conner Borgelt, “ASU Class Holds Protest as Part of Its Final Assignment,” The Republic (azcentral.com), April 14, 2017.
2. Ibid.

Deficit Reduction and Tax Breaks: Rhetoric and Priorities

Actions speak louder than words. A tree is known by its fruit. Where your treasure is, therein lies your heart. These three sayings each have at their root a value on integrity or authenticity that cuts through purported assertions designed to manipulate or otherwise mislead. Integrity here is consistency between word and deed. When members of Congress have cried that the sky was falling under the weight of the annual deficits and the accumulated debt of the U.S. Government, a person might ask by looking at the actual votes on legislation whether the representatives really considered the fiscal imbalances as so dire. If someone exclaims that her house is about to explode but does not act accordingly, such as in running out of the house rather than finishing dinner, it is reasonable to doubt that the person really believes that a blast is imminent. In protecting tax breaks even amid a deficit of over $1 trillion in 2011, members of Congress belied their own warnings concerning the American governmental debt crisis. The American people as a whole let their representatives get away with the Janus-like stances, and this in turn eventually allowed the U.S. Government debt to exceed $20 trillion. 

Generally speaking, a crisis truly acknowledged does not admit the luxury of granting the status quo a continuance. In other words, if the elected officials really did view the trajectory of deficits as unsustainable in 2011, then continuing the tax breaks would have been off the table. In prioritizing protecting constituent interests by tax breaks and by insisting that deficit-reduction is only to be accomplished by spending cuts, a member of Congress is actually saying that the deficit/debt problem is not really a crisis. 

So when the U.S. Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell said in 2011 that he was open to ending tax breaks for special interests yet without including those of his constituents, he undermined his insistence that the deficit must be significantly reduced.  He argued that the tax break that he had secured in 2008 for the owners of thoroughbred racehorses was essential for the protection of jobs in Kentucky. Of course, the financial interests of racehorse owners were not necessarily in line with—or reduce to—the protection of jobs. In political diction, the interests of capital hide behind those of labor even while going after those interests in private so as to maximize profit. That is to say, subterfuge may be the name of the game in the public square. The same can be said of Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who claimed to want to eliminate tax breaks except for a proposal for a tax cut for small breweries, such as Samuel Adams in Boston. The deficits must not be such a big problem if the U.S. could afford additional tax cuts. At the time, mega-wealthy “operations like oil refineries, Hollywood productions and hedge funds have all profited” by tax breaks.[1] Tax breaks for industries in general added up to an estimated $123 billion a year—hardly chicken feed.

The “disconnect between the lawmakers’ words and deeds" reflected the hurdles that Congress and the White House faced as they looked to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the government's debt.[2] Talk of cutting tax breaks to raise money and reduce the debt had become a mantra in Washington, but it threatened sacred ground; "such breaks are a favorite tool among both Republicans and Democrats to reward supporters and economic interests in their home states.”[3] Given Fed chief Ben Bernanke's remarks on October 4, 2011 before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that even reducing the debt by $1.2 trillion would not be enough, talk of protecting favorite tax breaks undercuts any claim that the public debt is a dire problem. To be sure, obviating another recession was also on Congressional minds. However, even as he was urging Congress to act in order to avoid a double-dip recession, Bernanke said of deficit-reduction efforts, "More will be needed to achieve fiscal sustainability."[4] That is to say, the U.S. Government could lose even its AA rating. Risking this by protecting local interests is short-sighted; it is like a biker accelerating down a hill while looking only a few feet ahead. We might save a few deck chairs for weary passengers, but what about that iceberg ahead? Is anybody even looking?

I contend that we, the electorate, ought to accord claims of crisis as valid only if sacred ground is given up. “Whether any of [the tax breaks] are scrubbed from the books may ultimately prove how serious Congress is about reducing the debt.”[5] It is the price of admission, as it were, to having a legislator’s claim of a serious problem being recognized as authentic rather than as possibly just hyperbolic, attention-getting rhetoric.

Without a verifiable indication of some actual give on a sacred cow, a legislator should be told, “prove it!” regarding his or her claim on the necessity to reduce the deficit. If no such sacrifice is proffered and made, then the politician ought to be ignored as if he or she were crying wolf. Otherwise, we enable two-faced Janus behavior that undermines public confidence in the government and misleads us into being too confident that the serious problems are being solved. The American electorates as well as the media companies are perhaps too accustomed to letting our elected legislators off the hook by taking their words at face value as if they were self-validating. In the case of the U.S. Government’s continuing deficits and accumulated debt, the United States can ill-afford other priorities (even in terms of presumed GNP and job increases) coexisting antithetically with the baleful platitudes of crisis if the imbalances truly are unsustainable and a danger to the American union and its republics. That is to say, given the magnitude of the problem, the members of Congress should be held closer to account in terms of deeds matching words. Priorities, the making of which is part of the job of a legislator, should match the rhetoric in front of the cameras.

1. Ron Nixon and Eric Lichtblau, “In Debt Talks, All Tax Breaks Are Not Alike,” New York Times, October 3, 2011. 

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Jon Hilsenrath and Luca Di Leo, "Bernanke Issues Warning, Urges Action on Economy," Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011. 

5. Nixon and Lichtblau. 

Coronavirus Reveals Dysfunctional Culture in Arizona

In mid-October, 2020, when the coronavirus was again peaking in E.U. states such as France and Germany and U.S. states such as Wisconsin and New Mexico, public health experts were worried about how the upcoming flu season would interact with the new virus, especially as people gather more indoors when outside temperatures turn colder. On October 15, 2020, for instance, seven U.S. states saw record numbers of hospitalizations, according to the Covid Tracking Project, and fourteen states set records for their seven-day averages of new daily cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.[1] France and Germany had already instituted nightly curfews. On October 16, Tier 2 Restrictions went into effect in London, which include urging people to avoid public transportation. Because physical distancing is not always possible on buses, subways, and light rail, universal mask wearing was crucial. According to IHME projections at the time, universal mask wearing in general “could save the lives of more than 70,000 Americans in the next three and a half months.”[2] With New Mexico’s chief executive referring to the coronavirus situation as “the most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced” on October 14, it was very troubling that Arizona, which borders New Mexico, had failed to enforce laws requiring masks on public transportation. This failure is extraordinary because of the mentality behind it.
On June 19, 2020, Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area, had announced mask regulations approved by the Board of Supervisors. One of the regulations reads, “All riders and operators on public transportation must wear a mask.”[3] This bore directly on the light rail and buses, which Metro Valley, the transportation authority, either ran directly or through subcontracted operating companies and Allied Security. With enforcement of the new regulation being “the responsibility of law enforcement,”[4] Metro Valley announced that it would not use its employees and subcontracted security guards to enforce the regulation. In allowing passengers to board the buses and light rail without wearing masks, Metro Valley was actually breaking the law even during the “second wave” of the virus in June, 2020. In fact, it was not uncommon to see bus drivers and security guards either not wearing masks or wearing them around their chins rather than on their mouths and noses. It was especially common to see the riders wear masks covering only the chin.
Metro Valley’s excuse for not enforcing the “requirement,” which meant allowing passengers (and employees) to be on mass transit without wearing masks even though the regulation forbid it, was that some passengers (and employees) could not wear masks due to medical conditions like asthma. Allowing this exception to break the rule overall bespoke ignorance, stinginess, and laziness. Because at risk riders could have been accommodated with the modest requirement of having their respective physicians fill out a medical form that in turn would be necessary to obtain a special medical transit ID. Medical IDs were already issued to the disabled who had a medical provider fill out Metro Valley’s medical form. The transit authority did not have to emasculate the regulation and thus the public health on account of an exception. Talking to Metro Valley supervisors, I was struck by the near obsession on the exception to the extent that I could detect no awareness of making a requirement anything but, and in so doing, violating the regulation. Small minds should not rule large companies, for the consequent harm to the public can be large.
I was thrice flabbergasted when I listened on my phone to Metro Valley customer-service employees insist that masks were required on buses and light rail and that passengers could ride without masks was not incompatible with the requirement! Declarations by ignorance that cannot be wrong have a bad odor. Such ignorance has no legitimate basis in standing on stilts above customers (or anyone). When I pointed out the obvious point that allowing maskless riders on buses and trains means that masks are not required, the standard reply was actually corrective. “Masks are required. Riders will not be turned away for not wearing masks.” How can a mind possibly hold those two thoughts together as if they were consistent? Perhaps willful ignorance enjoys being corrective because of the little bit of power that can be enjoyed—so starved for the pleasure from power is the weak bird of prey, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Unfortunately, neither the county sheriff’s office nor the Phoenix police (nor that of at least one suburb) felt the need to enforce the county and various city laws on masks. “You need to call Metro Valley on that,” I was told as I sought comment. Even if Metro Valley had a policy of enforcing rather than breaking the regulation (and city laws) mandating masks on public transit, it was still the responsibility of law enforcement (i.e., not a transit company) to see that the regulation (and laws) are enforced. For law-enforcement agencies of municipal governments to rely on company policies conflates governmental law with organizational policies. The lack of accountability was staggering even as the coronavirus remained as a viable threat to the public health.
The political and educational cultures in Arizona were such that efforts to enforce the regulation and correct Metro Valley’s pathetic policy were especially important. On October 17, 2020 in a conference room at a resort at Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, two presenters with QAnon “went on a long diatribe against people who wear masks to prevent the spread [of coronavirus]. It’s a way to control people, and a symbol of submission, they argued.”[5] It bears stating that in 2019, Arizona had ranked 49^th out of the 50 American states on education prior to college. Unfortunately, a culture of ignorance can easily support and spread the message of QAnon in Arizona—“inventing an imaginary threat and ignoring the very real virus” in spite of all those people who had already died from the pathogen. Such a culture can also enable a vacuous “requirement” to be perpetuated as if it were really a requirement rather than an instance of reason turned against itself with impunity. In such a culture, a significant number of riders and employees, including bus drivers, can be expected to skirt their company’s policy on mask-wearing because it is a fraud anyway. Such employees need only have told their respective supervisors that a medical condition prevents the wearing of a surgical mask without any written documentation to support the validity of the claim. In such a culture, bus drivers would rather bar riders from sitting in the front half of the buses, meaning that the riders might not be able to keep apart spatially as per governmental and even Metro Valley’s own guidelines, than bother to wear masks while driving. Why could such drivers be required to wear plastic face guards if a legitimate medical reason exists for not wearing a surgical mask? Besides the culture of ignorance, one of a lack of regard for the public health (i.e., other people) is also part of the sordid culture that has been so ensconced in Arizona.

A Metro Valley employee and a rider covering their respective chins. 

Security employees exposing their noses and mouths contrary to company policy. It is no wonder that riders did so as well, or went without masks, even though they were "required."

At times, the bus rider on the right held his green towel by his teeth, as if this were equivalent to wearing a mask. Such minimalists were common on public transportation during the pandemic.

A bus driver wearing his mask to cover his chin. I called Metro Valley to report the unsafe practice, and yet two months later, the driver was still leaving his mouth and nose exposed (see photo immediately below). Moreover, the continued prevalence of drivers without masks or not wearing them correctly is an indication that Metro Valley and its subcontracted operator companies have been managerially incompetent in holding drivers accountable. The continued bad driving (e.g., stopping abruptly rather than coasting to a light already red) also points to managerial negligence. 

Two (of several) other bus drivers not wearing masks, hence violating company policy. Were they medically exempt, presumably they would be wearing face coverings instead. 

Seats being held/blocked contrary to Metro Valley's policy by drivers. A plastic divider between the drivers and the seats is supposed to be sufficient protection for the drivers. Their efforts at over-protection, incredibly even by maskless drivers, can be at the expense of passengers being able to maintain physical distance between each other. Even though restricting the seating violates company policy and the company is aware of the practice, accountability has been a problem. 

A security guard starring at me taking a picture (which is legal) perhaps to intimidate me while literally overlooking the maskless rider stretched out on three seats. Starring at innocent riders to intimidate them while ignoring infractions of train policies (e.g., lying over three seats) epitomizes the local police/security culture. 

Four security guards in one-half of a train car, and four in a train car on a routine basis. Such excessiveness intimidates paying customers and leaves other trains without any protection. This epitomizes the local police/security culture in which as many of three backup police cars are used for police giving a traffic ticket. Meanwhile, the police departments refuse to enforce the laws on mask-wearing in retail stores and on public transportation. Hence, "bipolar" aptly characterizes the culture, wherein minor matters deprioritize more important ones. 

A security employee prohibited by Metro Valley even to instruct riders how to wear masks correctly. 

Perhaps the overriding question is how such a badly managed mass transit company (including its subcontractors that operate the buses) could continue in such a condition of ineptitude. In 2019, I had shot lots of videos of aggressive bus drivers, bad driving (e.g., stomping on the brake pedal at the last minute), and excess security on some trains (hence with none in others). The city of Tempe’s Transportation director invited me to attend a meeting with Tempe’s transit director, representatives from Metro Valley and the director of one of the bus-operating subcontractor companies (First Trans) in the room. Reflecting the local culture, the director dismissed all of my videos because one of them shows speeding of only six miles-per-hour above the speed-limit. To my utter astonishment, the other people in the room let him get away with the illogical effort to invalidate all of the videos—even those showing aggressive bus drivers shouting at passengers (the drivers generally viewed their ridership as lower class than themselves, which would have to be pretty low). Tempe’s representative lied to the director, “The city of Tempe has no problem with the driving,” after only months earlier having told me that speeding is a real problem (to which I added hard braking). Perhaps bribes helped reinforce the pathetic inter-organizational culture there.
Also up for grabs is why the local law enforcement would decide not to enforce a law so relevant to the public’s safety/health, and let the mass transit company (and its contractors) violate the law by allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. It seems that in Arizona, the local law enforcement agencies have too much discretion over which laws they will enforce. Anyone calling in a noise complaint there knows this to be true. 
Ironically, and reflective of the bipolar culture, residents in poor and middle-class areas have had to endure police departments' excess reliance on low-flying police helicopters, which have routinely interloped beyond their respective jurisdictions (such as a city helicopter flying over county land), flown outside of designated air corridors for fly-through traffic, and flown around more expensive neighborhoods.  
On the evening when I published this essay at a coffee shop, a police car passed by as I was about to go to the shopping center's parking lot, and a few minutes a police helicopter flew over diagonally. Both seemed to be on a routine basis and duplicative rather than on a coordinated search. Then a mile away, just after I had stopped at a grocery store, another police helicopter was making at least ten wide circles over a nice looking residential neighborhood before flying away. Then just before I reached my apartment, several miles away, I saw yet another police helicopter (with yet another in the distance). The next morning on my way to the coffee shop to edit this essay, I again saw a police helicopter. The local residents may be used to living in a police state, but we others are not and it doesn't take long for us to notice it on account of its excessiveness, just as we new-comers notice the proclivity of the local police departments to refuse to enforce certain laws. To be sure, surveillance and so many back-up police cars for traffic tickets do take up resources, including personnel. If half the effort were applied instead to enforcing masks on public transit when the E.U. and many U.S. Midwestern and Northeastern states were coronavirus hotspots, Arizona would have been in a better position going into the winter.  

[1] Christina Maxouris and Jason Hanna, “The US Has Reached 8 Million Covid-19 Cases, and the Pace of New Infections Signals a Tough Winter,” CNN.com, October 16, 2020.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Board Approves Mask Regulations Due to Community Spread of COVID-19,” Maricopa County Communications Office, June 19, 2020.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Donie O’Sullivan, “Analysis: A CNN Reporter Went to Two Different QAnon Events. Here’s What He Found,” CNN.com, October 19, 2020 (accessed same day).

Ruth Bader Ginsberg: Societal Change as the Mission of the U.S. Supreme Court

By chance, I watched RBG (2018), a documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, on the day she died in 2020. Being just a month and a half before the U.S. presidential election, the sudden opening immediately became political. This is of course to be expected, given that the sitting U.S. president nominates candidates and the U.S. Senate confirms them. The role of political ideology on the bench and thus in court decisions, however, is considerably more controversial because the justices are tasked with interpreting the law rather than stitching their own ideologies into law as a means of changing society. The documentary demonstrates that changing society through law was precisely Ginsberg’s objective.

The full essay is at "RBG."

On the American Military-Industrial Complex

A democratic republic affords many avenues for organized private interests to influence public policy. The fact that such interests are organized is enough to outweigh the influenced of an organized constituency. Add in the money available to organized interests and the imbalance is exaggerated. The military industrial complex—the “informal” alliance between a military and private defense-contractors is a case in point in the United States.

At the end of his second term in 1961, President Eisenhower warned the American people of the abuses of power that can come from the military’s alliance with its defense-contractors. The influence of the alliance, in other words, could come to trump the influence of the electorate and what is in the best interests of the United States in the world. After World War II, a permanent armaments industry emerged; the president was concerned that its influence would grow too much. He said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence. . . . The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”[1] Once such power exists, it can protect itself even from threats from the electorate. Such protection can be explicit, as in efforts to keep the U.S. in a war, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were quite long ones.

Roughly sixty years after Eisenhower’s farewell speech, President Trump publicly claimed that the U.S. military seeks to do the bidding of the defense contractors.[2] Such an open admission was itself startling, for the president was telling the electorate that private companies effectively control defense policy. The interests of such companies are private, and thus partial, rather than being identical to the public good, which a republic’s government is supposed to enact and protect. Where a few strong interests, whether that of the financial sector or defense contractors, can control elected representatives, a democracy can actually be a mere gloss for the books. A republic is thus vulnerable.

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1. “President Eisenhower Warns of Military-Industrial Complex,” History.com, November 16, 2009.
2. Maeve Reston, “Trump Presses On after Rough Week with His Presidential Image in Shambles,” CNN.com, September 12, 2020.

Britain's Obsession with Sovereignty Threatens Trade Treaty with the E.U.

Months after Britain seceded from the E.U., the government of the former state went rogue in intending to pass a law that would unilaterally change, and thus violate, the terms of the post-secession trading agreement between the UK and its former union. The bill proposed no new checks on goods going from the Northern Ireland region to the other regions of the UK. Whereas the British prime minister was claiming that the full sovereignty of the former state meant that Parliament could unilaterally change the terms of a treaty, the European Commission was saying, in effect, that an agreement is an agreement. I contend that the Commission was correct. Moreover, even before the UK seceded from the European Union, an obsession on sovereignty (then, states' rights) rendered Britain vulnerable to failing to grasp the costs.  

I submit that a treaty is no longer valid if one party uses its governmental sovereignty to unilaterally alter the terms. The E.U. could have replied that if the former state passes its bill, then the trading treaty would be null and void. The UK wanted a trade treaty, so that government would have to start from nothing in negotiating a new one should that government violate the one already agreed to prior to the secession. Fortunately, the secession itself was not contingent on the post-secession trading treaty going into effect, for Britain's insistence on its full sovereignty even as the state was semi-sovereign as a state in the E.U. was problematic. 

While the UK government's insistence on its full governmental sovereignty was correct at the time the proposed bill was proposed in 2020 (i.e., after secession), the claim of full sovereign of any E.U. state, including the UK before it seceded, would be false. The rational flaw that resides in the contention that the trade treaty would still hold even if one of the parties unilaterally changes the terms is also in the contention that a state of a union can unilaterally change the terms of federal law, as South Carolina had done in the U.S. in the early 1830's. 

Put another way, whereas the British government was correct that a trading agreement going into effect after secession counts as a treaty, which a government's legislature can change because it is sovereign, to make the same claim regarding federal law in a political union would not hold. So when David Cameron claimed when Britain was an E.U. state that the E.U. was just another network of (sovereign) countries to which Britain happened to belong, he was wrong in implying that the British Parliament held full sovereignty. He was conveniently ignoring the fact that the states had delegated some sovereignty to the E.U., and that laws passed on the federal level were not treaties relative to the sovereignty retained by the state governments. 

Even though Britain was no longer a state of the E.U. in 2020 when the Parliament was considering a bill to unilaterally change what was in fact a treaty, it seems that the need to continue to emphasize sovereignty was a bit overdrawn, and not in the former state's economic interest. For just as one party to a treaty can change it unilaterally, the other party can walk away, tearing up the treaty and legitimately claim that no agreement exists. 

Corona Crisis: Unethical and Criminal Businesses and Municipal Agencies Pervade in Phoenix, Arizona

On July 7, 2020, NBC News reported that Arizona had a record number of cases (105,094) and of deaths (1,927), with a four percent daily increase in reported cases. Also, coronavirus hospitalizations and related ventilators being used were also at record highs. A reporter with MSNBC stated, “Arizona is in crisis.” On the previous day, on MSNBC television, that same reporter had said, “Arizona is in free fall,” in that the number of cases was rising so fast. It had taken three months for the first 50,000 cases and only 23 days for the next 50,000. Observing that people were not wearing masks in downtown Scottsdale, he reported that “Arizona is out of control.” People there were not taking precautions, and the local and state authorities were not on top of the crisis. On June 22, 2020, a physician with the University of Arizona-Phoenix interviewed on The 11^th Hour show on MSNBC asserted that the Arizonans who were saying, “No one is going to order me to wear a mask,” were being selfish because refusing to wear a mask, say on a bus or in a store or restaurant/bar puts other lives at risk. Also a salient ingredient of the crisis in Arizona was the anti-science contingent of the population. In an interview at the time, Alan Alda (of the TV show, MASH) pointed to “pockets of people who still think science is just another opinion” as having a mindset that “puts us all in danger.”[1] The rigors of scientific experiment, such as the use of control groups and random selection, render science closer to knowledge than are mere opinions based on ideology and a person’s own experience. Privileging one’s own ideology and experiences counts as self-embellishing, and perhaps even self-idolatry. Such people are not likely to accept knowledge that contradicts their respective opinions and experience. Living in Phoenix at the time, I had encountered a lot of anti-intellectualism and incompetence along with refusals to enforce virus-deterring policies and even laws. Just one year earlier, Arizona’s education system through High School (K-12) had been rated as 49 out of the 50 States. Combined with an ideology in which companies and individual residents should (which implies can) self-police themselves on physical-distancing and wearing face masks indoors in public and on public transportation,  the recipe is for a greater need for respirators. 

To be sure, Arizona got to the place of crisis in part because the governor had lifted the stay-at-home order and opened businesses on May 14, 2020. His choice was in line with the wishes of U.S. President Trump, who wanted a more productive U.S. economy that would facilitate the president’s re-election in the coming November. The spike in new cases began in Arizona after the governor allowed non-essential businesses, including bars, restaurants, and gyms, to reopen. Pressure from President Trump and a shared pro-business political ideology were likely factors in the Republican governor’s decision. Meanwhile, Arizona had more than its share of political ideologues who believed that business policy or a public law mandating physical distancing and mask-wearing were tyrannical overreaches even though government has a duty to keep its people safe. 

Does mandating the use of masks indoors in public constitute tyranny? Is God against public health? Are certain political ideologies blind to the health and safety of a people? Can what is generally viewed as outlandish in most democratic societies be mainstream, and thus virtually unchecked, in one particular society?

However, other salient factors leading to the crisis in Arizona as of early July are worthy of being mentioned. Such factors include the refusal of Arizonans overwhelmingly to maintain a physical distance from other people while in public—especially indoors, such as at retailers including grocery stores, department stores, and bars. Even before mid-May, when Arizona had been on lock-down, grocery store employees got away with regularly ignoring the store policies and state law on physical-distancing because neither the store managers nor public authorities (e.g., the local police, county Environmental Services dept, city government) would see that the policy or law was enforced. Store managers of two grocery chains blatantly told me that they were not enforcing their own physical-distancing policies and thus the state law. Even on July 9, 2020, when the state’s hospitals were nearing capacity from the virus, I was stunned at a Sprouts store to see neither customers nor employees paying any attention to the store’s own regularly-announced physical-distancing policy. From a business standpoint, refusing to follow or enforce a store policy goes beyond incompetence and sheer foolishness; fecklessness, I submit, was also in the mix.

Wearing masks indoors when in public became a local law in Phoenix in late June, 2020. A few days before July 4, 2020, I went to Target, a retail department-store chain, to return an item. As I entered the store, I saw a sign indicating that masks must be wore as per the local law. 

Inside the store, I asked the assistant manager helping me with the return what is done to customers who ignore the policy and law. “Oh, we can’t enforce that,” she said matter-of-factly. 

On the evening of July 4, I (stupidly) went to a bar/restaurant called Half-Moon Sports Grill for a burger. As I approached the establishment, I heard a group of customers leaving the “restaurant” wonder aloud, “No one in there is wearing a mask.” Yet I went inside anyway, though to an isolated table from which I could see the horse-shoe bar where neither masks were being worn nor physical distancing was being enforced (e.g. by spacing out the seating). The store’s policy violated the law on both counts. 

The seats had not been spaced out along the bar. Perhaps the manager was spaced out? Many people sitting at the bar and at the tables near me were not eating anything. Even actual drinking was sparse. The customers "nursing" their drinks could have removed masks to take periodic gulps or sips, as the case may be. 

Indeed, the governor had recently closed bars (and gyms) because they had been hotspots for transmission of the contagion. A waitress told me that masks were not required when people were sitting. The law, however, stated at the time that masks need not be worn while mouths are being used to eat or drink.  The manager of Half Moon must have assumed that anytime a customer is seated, he or she must be eating or drinking. This is not what I saw, and during a crisis wouldn’t it just make sense to err on the side of caution in interpreting the local law? I was especially shocked when the waitress came up to my table twice without wearing a mask; she had been walking without wearing a mask and she had apparently decided that physical distancing does not apply to herself.

So the next day, I gave the local police a tip. On a Sunday afternoon, the cops would go to the bar/restaurant to see if any violations were occurring. I offered to send the videotape I had shot inside the establishment, but the Phoenix police refused. So the matter being corrected depended on whether the bar was busy enough on a Sunday afternoon to show a violation. No one would ever guess that the matter was urgent and important; it was as if the police were oblivious to the unfolding health crisis. The police had obviously not been paying attention when the governor had only weeks early stated in a news conference that businesses refusing to enforce local and state measures would be dealt with. Instead, the police followed their typical minimalist enforcement routine. A minimalist mentality has no place during a crisis, except, it seems, in Arizona.

The local transit authority, Metro Valley Transit, already had a sordid reputation for enabling bus drivers who were hostile to paying customers and drove badly. In early July, the company showed just how incompetent it was by having signs and a company voice (phone) message indicating that masks were required on the buses and yet Oliver, a supervisor of the customer-service department, told me that because some passengers cannot wear masks for medical purposes (i.e., there were exceptions), the company was only recommending that masks be worn. That a requirement would be treated as optional because exceptions exist demonstrates gross managerial incompetence. Such incompetence (and narrow-minded rigidity) is apparently inert even to a societal crisis (e.g., sky-rocketing numbers of coronavirus cases). That is to say, more was involved than ignorance.

Masks being worn improperly, or "minimalist," quickly became popular in the Phoenix metro on the buses, with drivers looking the other way. In the photo just above, the driver had even contorted his mirror so as to see the passengers, and yet he did not even ask the passenger pictured to wear a mask in spite of there being a "Mask Are Required" ungrammatical sign facing the entry door. This is ironic, given the driver's intent to be able to watch as many passengers as possible. The pleasure of power seized at in weakness issues out in control, yet interestingly here without holding passengers accountable. 

On July 10, 2020, I was fortunate on my morning commute to be on a bus in which not only was the driver not wearing a mask, but three passengers were not too. One of them was biting down on a small towel, demonstrating that the lack of accountability on the non-enforcing drivers was particularly risky, given the willfulness and ignorance of many riders. By the same reasoning, the lax enforcement of the public-health state, county, and local (Phoenix metropolitan area) laws by police and the respective governments on not only the bus company, but also grocery and department stores and restaurants/bars bore a high health cost given the condition of the local population. 

It was bad enough that the vast majority of bus drivers were not enforcing the mask policy in spite of the local law even though signs notifying passengers (and drivers) of the requirement were on the buses. On July 10, I discovered that at least one driver didn't think his company's policy and the law pertained to him. After he let on three passengers who were not wearing masks, I called Metro Valley's customer service number. Not surprisingly, no one from the company (e.g., the driver's supervisor) bothered to call the driver during the route. That too is typical, even though the customer service employees could see to it that someone from the company immediately calls the driver, whether he or she is not wearing a mask, enforcing the policy/law, or being verbally abusive toward paying customers. In May, I had tried calling the local police on a driver who was refusing to comply with the bus company's policy on 10 riders maximum on a standard-sized bus. "You have to call the bus company," the police dispatcher told me. "But the driver is breaking the physical distancing state law," I exclaimed, utterly astonished that a private company rather than a police department would be the only enforcer of the law. "You would have to contact the bus company," I heard again. The local police also tried to avoid enforcing the local laws on nighttime noise, so I was not surprised at the push-back itself. 
During my conversation with Oliver of the bus company in early July, I mentioned the company’s voice-message and the signs specifying that masks were required. “They are wrong,” he informed me. He even said he would change the voice-message; I was not surprised at all a week later to hear the same phone-recording that masks were required. Oliver believed that he could not be wrong even though people could die as a result. So I wrote to the city of Phoenix and the local press on the conversation. Although Oliver had no reason to fear being held accountable, given the company’s squalid management cadre, I suspect that the city may have come down on the bus company for telling customers that wearing masks is merely recommended due to there being exceptions. For a week or more later, the bus company's customer service employees were no longer telling riders that drivers do not enforce what is a recommendation. Even so, drivers were still not complying, even though the company was finally taking its own signs and voice-recording seriously. 

Despite complaints from paying customers for some time on driver hostility and bad driving (e.g., abrupt stops), the management had failed to solve those two problems. In part, the drivers’ union was too strong, but the city of Phoenix and the suburbs were not good at holding the regional transit authority accountable. So I was not surprised in early July, 2020 when a bus driver became enraged when I called customer service to report that masks were not being worn by about half of the riders, and the driver was ignoring the company’s policy on the ten-passengers maximum on a regular-sized bus. With 17 riders on the bus, physical distancing was not possible, which made the non-compliance on masks particularly risky. Fortunately, the customer service representative also heard the driver’s shouts. In going after me rather than having enforced the policies (and laws) in the first place, that driver demonstrated to me why things were out of control in Arizona with regard to the pandemic. The driver was certainly out of control mentally, and his refusal not to enforce bus-company policies with impunity means that his company was out of control managerially. By implication, the city governments in the metropolitan area were falling short in holding the regional transit authority accountable.

By early July, 2020, I noticed that the riff-raff (i.e., rules don't apply to me) on the buses were developing a sub-culture wherein masks were to either not be worn at all or just cover the chin. Because the buses are so unreliable there, the riff-raff make up the vast majority of the ridership. Even so, drivers were not enforcing the mask requirement on that ridership, which one driver confided to me is generally viewed as pathetic by the drivers. Is not a refusal to enforce a requirement also pathetic? Does this not liken the drivers to their typical ridership? Signs on the buses continued to declare that the masks are mandatory, and the drivers continued to dismiss their duty to enforce that company policy. As evidence for this investigation, I took a photo of a rider as he was dozing off; he was wearing his mask to cover his chin only. 

When this passenger got off the bus, he put his bandana on even though no one else was on the sidewalk. 

As I turned back around, I saw the driver shaking one of her fingers at me as if she were scolding a child. It is legal to take pictures on the buses and light rail in Arizona, and yet the driver felt sufficiently emboldened in her refusal to enforce the policy that she called her supervisor and took a picture of me!  Rather than realize that she had failed to enforce a requirement, she directed her hostility to me. Generalizing, given all the reports of driver hostility toward passengers, the drivers who refused to enforce company policy not only felt entitled to do so, but also aggressively went after the paying customers who felt that the drivers should be held accountable because they were putting the health of those customers at risk. Sadly, given the continued bad driving and driver-hostility generally, I could conclude that the company’s management was lax (i.e., incompetent) on holding its drivers (and bus operating subcontractors) accountable.

It is interesting that at least some retail companies, bar/restaurants, and bus companies in Arizona gave up on enforcing their own respective policies (and any underpinning laws), while Airlines, libraries, medical clinics, and hospitals had no such problem. It is not surprising that NBC News would find that things are out of control in Arizona regarding the pandemic. It is ironic that such a heavily-policed state, where intimidation from a huge police show of force/presence is presumed to be the best deterrent to crime, would be so deficient on enforcement even during a crisis. Perhaps views of the national news could finally see just how pathetic the situation in Arizona really was, and likely will be for some time.

Theists, ecologists, and ethicists could agree that a pandemic taking a particularly dire toll on such a people would make sense. Theists could point to God’s disfavor on the selfishness, lack of consideration for others’ health, refusal to do one’s duty in enforcing public-health business policies and governmental laws, and hostility. The same rationale would support a variant on the Biblical story of Noah—this time with God extinguishing our species for having refused to sufficiently stave off carbon-induced climate change. Naturalists could paint a picture of a selfish, inconsiderate people being especially prone to a pandemic. Nature abhors weakness, and thus a weak people. Ethicists might say that it is just that people who refuse to enforce policies or laws protecting the public health during a crisis catch the virus themselves. Similarly, bus passengers and retail customers whose risky behavior puts others at risk could be said to deserve to suffer the plight themselves. They would doubtless disagree, and they would insist that they could not be wrong about it, as if they were gods on stilts during a flood.

1. David Hochman, “Alan Alda Is Obsessed with the Power of Science,” AARP: The Magazine, June/July, 2020.