Notes From the Pandemic

Millions of people across the country are under order to stay at home. The economy is collapsing and many who don't do the kind of work that can be done from home are losing their jobs.  And along with their jobs, they're losing their health insurance, just when they need it the most.  This is one reason why coupling health care with employer-provided for-profit health insurance is such a bad idea.

And those that don't do the kind of work that can be done at home turn out to be the very heroes that may save us from this pandemic.  The truck drivers, the people who stock the grocery shelves, the farmers, the utility workers and city services, the nurses and the medial technicians are actually the ones preventing civilization from collapsing.  Politicians, bankers, and pundits aren't helping things at all.

On Saturday, The New York Times ran an editorial condemning Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler and North Carolina's Bill Burr over their insider trading.  "On the very day of the (Health) committee’s coronavirus briefing," they write, "(Loeffler) began her own stock sell-off, as originally reported by The Daily Beast. Over the next three weeks, she shed between $1,275,000 and $3.1 million worth of stock, much of it jointly owned with her husband, who is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Of Ms. Loeffler’s 29 transactions, 27 were sales. One of her two purchases was of a technology company that provides teleworking software. That stock has appreciated in recent weeks, as so many companies have ordered employees to work from home."

The Times further notes that even as she was shedding shares, Ms. Loeffler was talking down the threat of the coronavirus. "Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on Coronavirus readiness," she tweeted on Feb. 28, assuring the public that the president and his team "are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe.”  And even as anxiety spread, she talked up the economy. "Concerned about the #coronavirus?" she tweeted on March 10. "Remember this: The consumer is strong, the economy is strong & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe.”

"There may, of course, be perfectly reasonable explanations for what, initially, appears to be illegal — and morally reprehensible — behavior," the Times rationalizes.  "Mr. Burr and Ms. Loeffler deserve the opportunity to provide those explanations. The Senate should initiate an ethics investigation of all accusations, and, if warranted, refer relevant findings for criminal prosecution."

The real scandal here, the Times concludes, is the way in which these public servants misled an already anxious and confused public. "In times of crisis," they write, "the American people need leaders who will rise to the occasion, not sink to their own mercenary interests."

Mercenary interests: Ten years ago, Loeffler and her CEO husband bought a 15,000-square-foot mansion (ideal for social distancing!) named Descante on Tuxedo Road in Buckhead for $10.5 million, which was the most expensive real estate transaction ever in Atlanta.  Modeled in the style of an old European estate, Descante is a stucco, steel, and limestone structure that boasts Versailles parquet in the dining room, a library with a secret passage to the living room, and a nineteenth-century pool house from France.

We need more cooks, garbagemen, telephone linemen, ambulance drivers, and security guards to save America.  Politicians rarely do any good for anyone (except themselves).