20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina | Federal government plans to blow off disaster response quicken

Today is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans.

-- "Stories From The Storm: Remembering 20 Years Since Hurricane Katrina," Weather Channel
-- "Hurricane Katrina, 20 years later," NPR

Looters make off with merchandise from several downtown businesses in New Orleans, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina hit the area. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

When the disaster of federal government response to Hurricane Katrina's effect on New Orleans transpired, my overarching thought was that the cost of austerity-neoliberal policies introduced during the Reagan era finally hit, in that over the previous 20 years, government cutbacks could be withstood because of the long period of overinvestment that preceded it.

-- "Capital shallowing: the effect of disinvestment on government functioning," 2023

Certainly, the Trump Administration's desires to cut FEMA ("The Trump administration says it wants to eliminate FEMA. Here's what we know," NPR, "Trump says he plans to phase out FEMA after 2025 hurricane season," CNN) and devolve emergency response fully to the states is problematic because such "natural" or weather related disasters can exceed the resources and ability of local and state government to respond.

Levee works built to protect New Orleans from floods were inadequately planned and built, and were especially vulnerable to extranormal storm events.  AP photo.

It's already bad that the Trump Administration has politicized what areas get disaster declarations approved ("FEMA delays disaster aid to multiple states while Texas receives rapid approval," EHN, "FEMA faces backlog of emergency aid requests as hurricane season nears," Washington Post), and how quickly ("Hawley says FEMA is ‘slow-walking’ disaster declaration requests, but he’s pushing Trump," St. Louis NPR, " Trump's former FEMA chief opens up — and says administration is 'delaying' aid," Politico).

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became a symbol of the government's failure to prevent damage and save lives after Hurricane Katrina. Here, a plea spray-painted on plywood sits in front of an apartment complex on Sept. 4, 2005, in Biloxi, Miss., which was hit hard by the storm. Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Washington Monthly has a good article, "Trump’s Definition of DEI Is a Disaster for Disaster Management," on the topic of how calling planning and response "diversity" and therefore not funding it will have disastrous consequences.  From the article:

Billion in damages mark, outpaced only by the record-setting 28 in 2023. Presiding over America’s response to this cataclysmic situation, we have a president ignoring the science on climate change, rolling back environmental protections, and denying half of the requests the federal government receives from states for major disaster aid. From weakening the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to laying off hundreds of federal employees critical in forecasting and responding to extreme weather events, this administration has already shown itself to be disastrous for disaster management.

But the unequal consequences of natural catastrophes reveal an added danger that Trump’s wide-ranging rollbacks create. When wildfires ravaged Los Angeles at the beginning of this year, killing at least 30 people, forcing around 200,000 evacuations, and destroying more than 16,000 structures, then-Trump advisor Elon Musk placed the blame squarely on L.A. agencies’ prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

An aerial view Jan. 28 of trees and homes that burned in the Palisades Fire in 

the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Mario Tama, Getty Images

... we accept the Trump administration’s operational definition of the acronym, the L.A. fires—and every other natural disaster—most definitely have something to do with DEI. Since January, the administration has cast DEI to mean any consideration of populations uniquely at risk, turning efforts to identify and address where needs are greatest into “dangerous preferential hierarchy.” In response, government agencies have been limiting the use of language like “at risk,” “historically,” “marginalized,” “underserved,” and hundreds of other terms, according to a New York Times analysis.

Not surprisingly, those with the least resources have the most to lose in the face of such disasters.  Planning and responding to disaster efficiently saves money, time, and lives.

The inability of the Trump Administration to have any other agenda than wrecking the capacity of the federal government to add value to society is breathtaking ("It was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history: Have we forgotten Katrina's lessons?," NPR).

=====

In 2007, I was in New Orleans for the National Main Street conference and I went on a Katrina "disaster" tour.  The tour guide was incensed "how could the government do this?"  I said, "have you ever been to Detroit?"

Flood waters from Hurricane Katrina cover streets in New Orleans on Aug. 30, 2005. It is estimated that 80 percent of the city was under flood waters as levees broke and leaked around Lake Pontchartrain. Vincent Laforet/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.

Empty lots in the Brush Park neighborhood of Detroit.

Breaking free of neoliberalism

Jordan Himelfarb, Opinions editor for the Toronto Star interviews ("My dad used to run Canada’s public service. As the Star’s opinion editor, I asked him what he got wrong, how he turned left — and why he keeps needling me about my work") his father Alex, on his new book, Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge.

Neoliberalism is not unique to the United States or the UK, it is a world-wide phenomenon.

AH: You’re right that we are living in an age of crisis which itself ought to suggest there’s something very wrong about how we have organized ourselves. Add to that our collective tool kit to address those crises has rarely been weaker. The 1980s neo-liberal counterrevolution, when governments focused single-mindedly on growth and came to see their primary role as creating the conditions for business to prosper, stripping away as many barriers to profit as politics allowed, changed not just government but the country and for that matter us. 

Freedom — economic freedom and freedom from government — became a core value. Competition would sort out the winners and losers. Inequality was not only inevitable but right. Unsurprisingly, decades of flattened taxes, deregulation, privatization, offshoring and financialization — the neo-liberal policy suite — have led to increased inequality and insecurity — and a loss of trust in our public institutions. Just look at how few people vote irrespective of the stakes and how many seem ready to burn it all down.

JH: Your book is premised on the idea that neo-liberalism has created deep inequalities, constrained our collective capacity to meet big challenges and generally spread misery and anger by undermining solidarity and turning us against one another. If it’s so terrible, why does it persist? 

AH: Not that hate, exploitation and misery — even globalization — somehow didn’t exist “before neo-liberalism.” But neo-liberalism did upend the post-war settlement, when it seemed that capitalism and democracy could nourish each other, that high profits and high wages could coexist, that growth would benefit everybody. Instead we have corporate concentration and extreme economic inequality and insecurity. 

And so finally to your question, I argue that neo-liberalism contains the seeds of its own perpetuation because it has undermined our collective tool kit — taxes have come to be seen as a burden or punishment, regulations as red tape and a drag on the economy, so too unions, while trust in government, in political parties, even in democracy continues to decline. Most significantly trust in one another — essential if we are to solve problems together — has been in sharp decline. So even as many have lost faith in how things are they have also, it seems, lost faith in the idea of the collective, in the possibility of doing big things together.

JH: So then, how, as you say, do we break free? 

AH: Ha. Big change is hard. But the stakes are high. (Italian political theorist Antonio) Gramsci recognized that in these in-between times when there’s a “war for position” the outcome is uncertain, things could flip this way or that. When asked if he was optimistic Gramsci responded with “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will” — optimism is a choice, despair is not an option. But there are many reasons for hope. Big change usually starts outside of government, outside of conventional politics — in civil society. And there are many people out there fighting for better. If they were to link up and find some common ground, see how their issues link together and to the larger public issues, who knows what’s possible. Research out of Harvard suggests that if 3.5 per cent of the population join together to fight — peacefully — for change, they almost always succeed. There’s no shortage of ideas and energy.

You don't have to bash the federal government to make the case for local action

Former Republican Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels writes a column for the Washington Post.  He takes conservative positions but he's not a wack job.  That doesn't mean that he doesn't mislead when he writes.

Volunteers planting a tree in 2018.  Getty Images photo.

His current column, "How philanthropy can work without trying to save the world," extols the value of community foundations and philanthropy for taking on local projects.  

He also cites a David Brooks column in the New York Times, "The Localist Revolution," on the value of localism.

Each takes the opportunity to position localism as far superior to federal action.  

But the federal government doesn't deal with rehabilitation of local parks or planting trees--well, the US Forest Service just provided to a lot of communities grants to do just that, "Announcing urban and community forestry funding"--and similarly supra localized projects.  OTOH, community foundations aren't in the position to fund transit systems or run military bases.

(And actually, not unlike the USFS program, the federal government does a lot of pass through funding through states to support local action through programs like the Federal Historic Preservation Fund, Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the Recreational Trails Program.)

The New Deal demonstrated that the federal government was/is capable of accomplishing great things, investing in the nation through investment in community-serving facilities, from rural electrification to building state and local parks via the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was a large jobs program, but it needed projects to do--building college dormitories, municipal buildings, parks, etc. was a good way to keep people employed.

But now, the ideology of neoliberalism ("Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems," Guardian) denigrates government in favor of private action.  Although, while Reagan implemented the ideology on steroids, arguably it started with Jimmy Carter (deregulation of the airlines, etc.) and it's an area of rare bipartisanship.

And in the US, the Republican party has degenerated into an anti-government, anti-public investment stance that makes positive action by the federal government less likely.  

This trickles down and shapes the electorate in ways that make many less inclined to support community initiatives and working together on projects of common interest ("In the land of self-defeat," New York Times).  

George Monbiot argues it's about values and an extrinsic versus intrinsic orientation ("To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him. Psychologists may have the answer," Guardian).  Extrinsics take, intrinsics give.  From the article:

We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop. 

If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.

Furthermore, the federal government, hampered by underfunding, does fail more regularly--albeit under Republican presidents more than Democrats, e.g., the Bush Administration response to Hurricane Katrina, or the Trump Administration response to covid (Trump basically killed 400,000 people) and its hurricane response in Puerto Rico (studies say at least 8,000 people died).

A good example is how the Republicans in Congress are outraged by re-funding the IRS, so it can collect the income taxes people should pay.  They'd prefer the wealthy blow off their obligations.

Neither Daniels nor Brooks write much about Republicans as obstructionists to quality of life and public investment in their states and communities. 

In fact they mostly vote against such bills and then fire off press releases and social media posts about how they brought various federally funded projects to their districts and states.

P.S. Republican-controlled states tend to have reduced quality of life as measured by life expectancy and other indicators ("People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties," Scientific American, "Data shows conservative policies on health, guns and more increase mortality," St. Louis Post-Dispatch).  From the P-D:

Meanwhile, researchers with the University of Washington analyzed political policies on a liberal-to-conservative scale, then measured mortality rates on a range of issues. Some newly empowered Missouri pot smokers might find it unnerving that the study found a correlation between conservative marijuana policies and lower mortality rates. But on virtually every other policy metric — health care, criminal justice, environmental protection, gun safety, labor rights, tobacco taxes — conservative policies and higher mortality rates went hand in hand.

====

Mailing envelope, 1960, US Forest Service packet of materials sent to a women's club in Ohio.   The envelope is in bad shape but the other materials are in excellent condition.

Recently I've been collecting (more) ephemera related to parks on various topics.  I came across the most fascinating set of US Forest Service materials from 1960.  

I already knew that "women's clubs" of various types, both when women couldn't vote and/or tended to be "housewives," were key elements in local civic affairs.  As women entered the workforce these organizations tended to wither away, with the major exception of the League of Women Voters.

The director of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, who later became director of the National Park Service, was a proto-feminist in part because of his wife, a suffragette and activist.  Both the Forest Service and NPS cultivated support through women's clubs across the country.

USFS published and distributed materials specifically designed for these groups.

It fits in with my belief that schools, libraries, parks and other public-facing units of local government can be loci for civic engagement, just like community foundations.

Retail electricity deregulation mostly benefits companies at the expense of consumers

 Just before the recent weather related debacle in Texas ("Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure" and "Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"), I was surprised to read a story about how many low income households in Baltimore were paying extremely high electricity rates as a result of deregulation ("Why the Poor in Baltimore Face Such Crushing ‘Energy Burdens’," Inside Climate News), which I meant to write about.

From the article:

Nationwide, low-income individuals like Jenkins—defined as those making less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $25,760 per year before taxes in 2021—can put anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of their earnings toward energy costs and sometimes far more, according to a recent report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. 

This exceedingly common, but often overlooked, reality can perpetuate cycles of poverty and lead to personal or familial ruin. 

By contrast the average household spends just 3.1 percent of its income on energy, although that ratio ranges widely depending on geographic location and the type of fuel used, the ACEEE study found. Researchers typically consider anything over 6 percent to be an unaffordable energy burden regardless of income. The report also found that energy burdens in Baltimore can be especially heavy, as 25 percent of low-income residents there spent more than 21.7 percent of their 2017 income on energy.

Apparently, through various deceptive marketing programs, and sometimes short term inducements, people end up switching to higher priced providers ("Maryland Thought Deregulating Utilities Would Lower Rates. It’s Cost the State’s Residents Hundreds of Millions of Dollars.," Inside Climate News)

In our household, I'm the person who deals with energy choice, and I was proud of the great rate we got in DC, 7.5 cents/kwH (from a BG&E subsidiary, which happens to be owned by the same company), which is a couple cents cheaper than the standard rate.

I never understood how people could be deceived, so long as they knew the base rate from the utility distributer, in DC's case that is PEPCo, and it usually ran from 8.9 cents to 9.4 cents.  

Now it's even lower, less than 7 cents/kwH, with a slight upcharge during the winter months, according to the comparison information compiled by the DC Public Service Commission, the utility regulator.

Many resellers offer a short term lower rate, but don't commit to the lower rate for the entire contract period.  Therefore, don't pick them.

The reality as a recent WSJ article disclosed ("Deregulation Aimed to Lower Home-Power Bills. For Many, It Didn’t"), is that most consumers pay more for electricity (and natural gas) as a result of deregulation, rather than save money.  We shouldn't be surprised.  Deregulation is mostly for the benefit of business, not consumers.

And like in Baltimore, low information consumers, often minorities, bore the brunt of the higher costs.  From the article:

From 2010 to 2019, retail electricity providers in 13 states and the District of Columbia charged $19.2 billion more than what regulated utilities would have.

A quick review of the DC PSC information finds only one or two companies from more than one dozen that offer rates comparable to PEPCO's base rate.  Although some offer a greater percentage of renewable energy sources, at a higher cost, and some people may be willing to pay a higher rate, because of their concerns about climate change.

There is an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun by former Governor Parris Glendening, saying utility deregulation had been a mistake ("Energy deregulation was a mistake in Maryland").

WRT Texas, interestingly, a Dallas Morning News consumer columnist, Dave Lieber, writing "The Watchdog" feature, had pointed out the serious problems with the way that Texas' electricity market was set up and managed for years, to no avail.

-- "No surprise Texas’ electricity system is a national laughingstock. Only customers cared, until now"

When I first came to DC in the late 1980s, and worked for a consumer group, back then many newspapers had reporters assigned to a "consumer beat," and they covered issues like these regularly.  Now very few newspapers provide this kind of oversight on a regular basis.

Although as Dave Lieber proved, even with attention, many businesses fail to change their practices.

Another example, Warren Buffett's predatory finance operation for mobile homes ("The Mobile-Home Trap," Seattle Times).

Financial failure of multiple local governments in the UK a function of Tory central government failure/neoliberalism overreach

In response to the Great Financial Crisis many national governments rejected Keynesian fiscal responses and instead imposed austerity.  Perhaps the greatest adherent to austerity was the Tory Government of the UK (abetted by Liberal Democrats), which gained power in 2010, after successfully blaming the Labour Government for the crash.

While it's commonly said that Ronald Reagan followed Margaret Thatcher's lead on neoliberalism, the fact is that Reagan pushed such approaches as early as his campaign for Governor of California, starting in 1965.  Photo: Rex Features.

Austerity was a way to further shrink government, although to be fair, plenty of privatization measures were adopted by the previous Labour Governments (although such initiatives started during the Thatcher years beginning in the late 1970s), now called neoliberalism ("Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems," Guardian).

The Conservative Party blamed the adoption of austerity on the EU, even though it was their choice ("Budget 2010: Pain now, more pain later in austerity plan," Guardian, 2010), and likely the effects of austerity on the populace along with the blame is the primary reason that a slight majority of Britons voted in favor of Brexit in 2016.

Britain has a very centralized form of government, with the national government the ultimate authority, and prime funder even of local government--local taxation schemes are minimal, property taxes exist but are quite low.

In the ten years since austerity, some local governments have lost as much as 2/3 of their total funding ("The devastating numbers that show just how BADLY Liverpool is treated by the Tories," Liverpool Echo, "Here in Liverpool, we know what northern austerity looks like up close," Guardian).

Basically, it's easy for British Conservative governments to single out local governments run by the opposition for deep cuts, something that Trump wanted to do, but the US system has legal fairness requirements that make that impossible ("Trump signs memo to defund 'lawless' cities but experts raise legality doubts," Guardian).

Plus, in the British funding system, local governments are also responsible for providing care to the aged, which is a cost that continues to explode.

Most governments are cutting all discretionary services, such as culture (libraries, museums, etc.), buying property as an investment to generate rental income, often in communities distant from their own, and privatizing as many services as possible to reduce headcount and pension responsibilities.

Even so, increasingly, local governments are going broke, and Conservative governments are arguing this is somehow the fault of the local governments, and "poor management," not austerity, not rising costs of aging care, not significantly reduced budgets.

John Harris of the Guardian reports that as many as 12 local governments are facing bankruptcy at the moment ("Levelling up? Most of the UK is still in the grip of austerity,"), while more than 150 local governments report that significant shortfalls are to come, abetted by the loss in business activity and increased costs due to covid ("Four English councils get emergency government funding," BBC).

US cities and states have a similar problem, but not nearly to the same degree.  While it is true that US state and local governments have serious financial overhangs from unfunded pension liability, Republicans are making similar fallacious arguments about local and state government financial exigency as a result of the pandemic, calling it a "bailout of blue states" ("The fiction of Mitch McConnell’s ‘blue state bailout’," Chicago Sun-Times) and being deliberately misleading ("Covid’s Comeback Means Washington Must Help Red And Blue States—Now," Forbes Magazine).

Yet another example of state failure/neoliberal overreach.  Adherence to neoliberalism results in significant disinvestment and underinvestment in government capacity.  For a long time this could be withstood because previous investment had been high, and was there to be consumed.  But after decades, the lack of investment finally reached critical mass and is weak in the face of any extranormal circumstances.

Coronavirus.  Both the US federal government under Trump and the UK government under Boris Johnson have been abysmal in responding to the coronavirus.  The UK per capita death rate is even worse than that of the US.

This was the logical result of the failure to invest in public health and to provide credible, scientific-based responses.  And the continual reduction of local government funding.  Although in the US, because of federalism, states and cities could act differently and professionally, while for the most part, British government centralism prevents this.  In the US, San Francisco, while not as successful as Taiwan, is a national best practice example of proper response ("What the San Francisco Bay Area Can Teach Us About Fighting a Pandemic," New Yorker).

Texas electricity failure.  But it's the same kind of state failure that resulted in the power crash in most of Texas two weeks ago -- while much of the state faced debilitating power losses the parts of Texas not part of that deregulated and lightly regulated system did not experience power losses ("Not being connected to rest of Texas helped El Paso in cold wave," El Paso Times).

Although Lubbock had already made a commitment to shift to the in-state system, which they may reconsider ("Sen. Charles Perry raising questions about ERCOT reliability as Lubbock prepares to join," KCBD-TV).

This is a function of climate change, more extreme weather and the belief that because Texas is in the South, it's not necessary to prepare for cold winters.  But the state has had multiple extreme cold events in the past 30 years, and each time it has blown off a concerted response. 

Flint water crisis. The state government took control of the Flint government, because it was bankrupt as a result of the destruction of the local economy because of its abandonment by the auto industry.  To save a few dollars, Flint changed its water provider, but failed to add the proper chemicals necessary to minimize lead leaching into the water system.  State control, minimal regulation by the environmental agency created the problem.  It would have cost a few thousand dollars per month for the chemicals!  The cost of responding to the crisis approaches or exceeds $1 billion.

And local government bankruptcies in the UK...

Not that President Trump reads, but maybe he should look at the Utah Leads Together Plan response to the pandemic

Trump ("Trump says he wants the country 'opened up and just raring to go by Easter,' despite health experts' warnings," CNN), Texan Lt. Governor Patrick ("Texas' lieutenant governor suggests grandparents are willing to die for US economy," USA Today) and others don't seem to have much of a plan in terms of their response to the coronavirus.

There has been a lot of coverage about how governors and mayors are far ahead of the federal government in terms of response.  It appears that Utah needs to be on the list, as its just released plan for dealing with the coronavirus, Utah Leads Together, seems to be significantly ahead of President Trump and state officials like Dan Patrick.  From the document:

The Utah Leads Together plan is based on the premise that every Utahn plays a role in Utah’s health and economic recovery. We lead together. To be successful Utahns must take three major actions:

1. Rigorously follow public health guidelines and measure transmission rates
2. Stay engaged with the economy
3. Assist those in need

It's a framework organized in three phases:

1. Urgent
2. Stabilization
3. Recovery

Thinking about the pandemic in these terms makes response much more graspable.

My "net assessment" of the US response to covid19

In the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius ("Where would the U.S. stand in a post-pandemic assessment?") discusses the "Net Assessment" process created by the Department of Defense to assess the comparative likelihood of the US and the USSR to survive nuclear war.

He opines about a net assessment comparing the response of China and the US to the coronavirus.

Here's my not particularly detailed response:

China has an authoritarian government that withheld information, endangering their citizens. But they did respond, eventually.  And their scientists communicated about the situation and the virus in scientific circles early, giving a leg up to creating tests and more quickly understanding the nature of the disease.

Photo: Rex Features.

Neoliberalism: the emphasis on the market at the expense of government.  Since the era of Thatcher and Reagan, neoliberalism has resulted in the denigration and defunding of government in the US ("Neoliberalism's 'trade not aid' approach to development ignored past lessons: Neoliberal development policy was radical and abstract, but its uncompromising approach proved dangerous in the real world" and ">Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems," Guardian). From the first article:

At the heart of the new right project was a particular constellation of ideas and policies known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is often used today as shorthand for any idea that is pro-market and anti-government intervention, but it is actually more specific than this. Above all, it is the harnessing of such policies to support the interests of big business, transnational corporations and finance. It seeks not so much a free market, therefore, as a market free for powerful interests.

From the second article:

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

Extreme Republican ideology.  With the rise in extreme Republican ideology--dating to Newt Gingrich's Speakership if not before ("How Newt Gingrich Destroyed American Politics," The Atlantic), and the most recent Presidential election, the US has a viciously incompetent federal government that failed to maintain public health monitoring and surveillance systems, and through continued incompetence spreads misinformation through the President, even though somewhat crippled federal agencies are reacting, although local and state agencies are more in the lead because of the vacuum of leadership and competence.

Public health and health care is not an integrated system.  The US has adopted an approach generally and specifically in terms of health care to governance and funding that de-emphasizes the importance of surveillance and stocking slack resources to be able to respond to pandemics in a timely fashion.

I can't remember the article I read, but it made the point that "the US doesn't have a health care system, it has various disconnected marketplaces."

Rural areas have been particularly hard hit ("The Quiet Crisis Of Rural Hospital Closures, Kaiser Health) and because rural Republican states have declined to expand health care access to the poor.

But plenty of urban hospitals have closed ("Hahnemann University Hospital Closure: What Philly Is Losing," Philadelphia Magazine; "St. Vincent Medical Center closes after a century, shocking community," KCRW/NPR)sometimes because they are owned by for profit firms, or because the cost of uncompensated care is high and threatens the financial health of university parents.

These 2019 entries include links to past entries concerning health care matters in the DC area:

-- "Another example of a failure to do public capital planning in DC: Council votes to stop funding United Medical Center
-- "Community health improvement planning"

This has resulted in a continued reduction in the number of available hospital beds and usually a decline in the number of ICU beds as well.  Per capita numbers for the US lag countries with national health systems.

More recent efforts to tie public welfare health coverage and food assistance to employment, making it more difficult for immigrants to get citizenship status if they've received public benefits increase the likelihood of poor health outcomes.  Not to mention the difficulties of applying for benefits--most states haven't adopted best practice computerized systems, and have closed offices where people normally apply, etc.

Difficulty of responding extranormally when circumstances warrant.  Plus the bureaucratic nature of agencies tends to make it difficult to respond in innovative ways let alone with alacrity in extranormal situations (e.g., compare South Korea or Taiwan's response to that of the US, and the testing creation and approval process; cf. the debacle concerning expanding the Seattle Flu Study to test for coronavirus, etc.).

Need for a national health care system.  How the US health care system is set up disincentivizes people to get "wellness" care because of copayments, missed work and loss of income, lack of sick leave, etc.

Ideally, a net assessment would be like Britain's health services assessment during WW2 ("Want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness: are Beveridge’s five evils back?," Guardian) because in moving people from cities to the country, they realized that the country was underresourced in terms of health care systems and that people weren't very healthy.

That resulted in the creation of Britain's National Health Service in 1948.

(How health care is delivered in the US needs to be reorganized, in three tranches for normal care: (1) wellness care; (2) management of chronic disease; and (3) catastrophic care; alongside a more robust public health system.)

Globalization and the precariousness of work.  The problem with globalization isn't necessary globalization, that is the economic and social interconnectedness, although this can be simultaneously strengthening and weakening--but because it was paired with the adoption of neoliberal principles and the simultaneous disruption to and elimination of a social safety net.

The loss of the safety net has heightened effects because of the change of the nature of work and the organization of the economy away from large employers, who traditionally provided health insurance (and pensions) in the US system.

Globalization made work more competitive, led to the migration of large scale industry to countries with cheaper labor, putting many people out of work, especially in center cities where manufacturing had been concentrated.

Replacing labor with capital.  Plus alongside globalization you have an increased focus on capital and mechanization, the simultaneous upskilling of jobs while also eliminating or outsourcing jobs whenever possible.

For example, an auto plant probably has 25% or fewer workers than it did 30 years ago.  In Flint, which had a peak GM employment of over 80,000 people (+ the multiplier effect of 3.0 add on jobs at suppliers), today there are fewer than 9,000 GM jobs.

Although some of that is because GM spun off its part manufacturing into separate firms including Delphi--still the overall number of jobs has been reduced by more than 50%).

More recently, IT, telecommunications and software has led to the elimination of jobs (such as in human resources, accounting, etc.).

People out of work, low wages, and limited social safety provisions are vulnerable.  This creates a fragmented society and economy that is economically and socially vulnerable to exogeneous shocks--climate change; financialization; pandemic; etc.

Vaccine for me (my country only, the US), not for thee: President Trump edition

Northshore School District, which includes Bothell High School north of Seattle, announced it was closing its entire district for up to two weeks.Credit...Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

At some point I'll write about the coronavirus and the implications it raises concerning universal health coverage, public health, public administration, and government competence in the face of an anti-government neoliberal philosophy.

I am flabbergasted that President Trump is trying to buy a German pharmaceutical research firm working on a coronavirus vaccine with the proviso that any vaccine produced would only be for the United States ("Germany tries to halt U.S. interest in firm working on coronavirus vaccine," Reuters; "U.S. Offered ‘Large Sum’ to German Company for Access to Coronavirus Vaccine Research, German Officials Say," New York Times).

It reminds me of the movie, "Head of State" where Chris Rock runs for president (not a great movie).  His opponent is known for the line:

God Bless America.  And no place else.



This from an administration that failed to create a working lab test ("CDC coronavirus testing failure is a national outrage," San Jose Mercury News) and has vaccine research facilities that appear unable to address the current contagion ("Federal vaccine development sites ill-suited to counter covid-19 epidemic," Washington Post).

I'm surprised that Jared Kushner ("Infighting, missteps and a son-in-law hungry for results: Inside the Trump administration’s troubled coronavirus response," Washington Post) didn't reach out to Elizabeth Holmes  ("Elizabeth Holmes' peril: Is Theranos founder facing ruin?," SJMN) for help on the testing side!

Suzanne and I are pretty different.  She has a sour  view of the community side of things, and generally doesn't believe that in bad times people will come together.  I am more optimistic, believing in the potential for community and connection even if it happens so rarely, and our elected officials aren't particularly great when it comes to vision and striving for better.

But in the vein of Suzanne, movies like "Right At Your Door" and "Contagion" challenged my thinking.  Both movies show outcomes and community and herd behavior that are pretty terrifying.

I was joking with her earlier today that the cable channels should be showing these movies on repeat.  Then again, people don't need to get ideas.

It's bad enough that supermarket shelves of toilet paper, rice and beans, and water are stripped bare.  What's wrong with tap water and do you really not have enough toilet paper stocked up otherwise?

PBS has provided open access to the American Experience episode on the "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918.  I guess one of the only reasons I know about it is because fiction writer John O'Hara wrote a bunch of stories about it, he being the son of a doctor active during the epidemic and a few decades ago I read a bunch of his books.

Right now, Covid19 disproportionately impacts the elderly.  What happened with "Spanish flu" is that it mutated between the first wave and the second, and became particularly virulent for young adults.

This NYT piece allows you to model various scenarios in dealing with Covid19.

-- "Opinion | How Much Worse the Coronavirus Could Get, in Charts"

Given that our health system has limited slack capacity in hospital beds generally and ICU beds specifically, a large marginal increase in demand in periods of already peak demand will swamp the system. That's what's happening in Italy ("Coronavirus: Italy records 368 new COVID-19 deaths - largest number in a day," SkyNews). To extrapolate, Italy's population is about 20% of the US.

National Public Lands Day, Saturday September 28th, 2019

(Always the last Saturday in September.)

-- National Public Lands Day

Separately from the book, This Land: HOW COWBOYS, CAPITALISM, AND CORRUPTION ARE RUINING THE AMERICAN WEST, mentioned in the previous post (also see the LA Times review, "Review: The American West is dying. Christopher Ketcham’s ‘This Land’ is a rallying cry to save it"), musician Gary Clark, Jr. has a song out called "This Land."  It's powerful  (Gary Clark Jr. talks Hollywood Bowl debut and making ‘This Land’: ‘I want to push all the buttons’," Orange County Register).".



And there is the famous Woody Guthrie song, "This Land Is Your Land" that we grow up learning and singing too.

National Public Lands Day: Saturday September 28th

Tomorrow is National Public Lands Day.

For most people, it matters most maybe because it's one of the days when entrance to National Parks are free ("You can go to national parks for free on Saturday. Or, you can volunteer. Perhaps both," Denver Post).

I've always wondered why this day isn't better leveraged in the DC area to drive volunteerism.

Many federal agencies own/manage public lands.  While public lands are all publicly-owned lands, perhaps when we hear the phrase "National Public Lands" we're most likely to think about lands controlled by the federal government, in particular National Parks and Monuments, lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, and national forests, managed by the Forest Service which is part of the US Department of Agriculture, wetlands managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

But there are sites run by the government, facilities and recreation spaces in association with waterworks managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, etc.

(Many states have state forest units as well as state parks groups.)

Trump Administration moves away from a conservation ethic.  Public lands been controversial for a long time.  Federal lands are caught up in various hard right disputes about the relationship of people to government, etc.

Some locals see federal rule as an intrusion, and economic interests outside of tourism agitate for cheap or free access to the land to support their various business endeavors (mining, logging, oil extraction, grazing).  Meanwhile, environmental and conservation interests prefer the lands be stewarded.

And the Trump Administration, which is vociferously implementing the anti-government agenda of the hard right,has made monetization of public lands a key element of its agenda.

One of the first acts of the Administration was to embark on a process to make certain national monuments smaller, to increase access to these lands for minerals extraction, logging, "recreation" that can damage lands (off road vehicles, etc.). .

Besides working to reduce the size of national monuments, open up lands and seas to oil drilling, redefining more narrowly the Endangered Species Act ("17 States Sue Trump Administration Over New Rules Weakening the Endangered Species Act," AP), narrowing the definition of "U.S. waters" to allow more pollution ("EPA announces repeal of Obama-era clean water regulation," CBS), they aim to relocate the BLM out west, to encourage regulatory capture by lands interests ("This federal headquarters is moving from D.C. to Colorado. Some Democrats are not happy," Washington Post)..

There is a new book out on the subject, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption Are Ruining the American West. I haven't read it yet, but there's a great interview with the author, Christopher Ketcham, at The Intercept, "HIKERS, TRUMP, AND THE CAPITALIST CONSPIRACY TO RUIN PUBLIC LANDS."

Climate change and public lands.  Public lands and waters are "the lungs of the earth," and climate change severely stresses our environment (an understatement).  Further stressing the environment by allowing more pollution, etc., makes things worse.

One way this is evident is toxic algae blooms in lakes.  The algae is stoked by fertilizer runoff, mostly from agriculture.  The water becomes unusable as a result.  Not just for recreation, as has been the case with some lakes in New Jersey this past summer, but for drinking water.

Misuse of public lands, places, and resources.  In response to celebrity selfies showing a disregard for heritage trees by Miley Cyrus ("Photos of Miley Cyrus raise concern about Joshua trees," Newsday), an Instagram stream #publiclandshateyou and website was created to draw opprobrium to similar cavalier treatment of public lands ("The vigilante shaming influencers for bad behavior in national Parks," Guardian).

But there are plenty of other examples.

Public Lands Day could be a good day to bring more attention to "Adopt-A-Space" programs, be it trails, roadways, streams, channels (Orange County, California has an Adopt A Channel program), transit stops, or bike routes, an idea I recently proposed, etc.

Is the National Health Service/universal health care the reason that the UK doesn't have an opioid crisis comparable to the US?

I have been offline for awhile because of the process of getting my house not only ready for renting, but able to pass a home inspection, as we are renting out the house legally, by registering it with the city, etc.

The city's inspection process has been under fire recently, because a fire at an illegal rooming house killed two people ("D.C. officials strengthen policies for dangerous code violations after deadly fire," Washington Post).

I was worried that was going to make our experience more difficult, but it didn't. The situations were different -- that was a building illegally converted into a rooming house, and besides that, doing it in ways that were unsafe.

Although it was plenty difficult in that we aimed to fix everything on our house that needed fixing, and given the reality of deferred maintenance over 11 years, the list of "what to do" became pretty long.

And there are other things that you have to do as a landlord with a property that you don't have to do as an owner-occupant, such as have storm windows and screens on every window -- and because we have a walkout basement that theoretically could be lived in, that was 6 windows...

And frankly, there were things that needed to be done when we bought the house and we didn't do them (like we never received a key to the garage and the lock had been painted over besides, but we never replaced the lock, so it never could be secured in the 11 years we lived there--well, I got it fixed, thank you Capitol Garage Door and it is so cool to open the door with a key and then lock it). Now we can put stuff in there (it has a dirt floor, so there are limits) like ladders etc. and it doesn't clutter the house.

Suzanne was worried we wouldn't pass (she gets anxious about stuff like that) and I said, besides the wear and tear on the floors, the house is in better condition today than we when we first walked in 11 years ago.

Now, I couldn't have said that 3 months ago.  It's been a process.  We found a great unlicensed "contractor" who was comparatively cheap, so it cost us considerably less than the normal cost.

For example, the new walkway.  The former walkway was constructed of individual bluestone "pavers," very large, which over the decades had settled slightly before grade.  We put this in its place, and afterwards, I planted zinnias along it. 

But that was a two-day project for the contractor, and I spent a couple hours digging out the stones, and transporting them to the garage.  Fortunately for us, we are one house off the alley, so I could get them to the garage that way (our house has two grade levels--the ground floor is at street grade, but the back of the house is like 6 feet or more lower, and we have a walkout basement).

In fact, I commented to my brother that the array of specialists we pulled together to do all this things (like rebuilding historic windows, replacing broken glass panes, yard work and hauling, garage door locks, finding replacement fencing, etc. -- we already have a great plumber and electrician--the plumber is fabulous but not cheap, but his work is always excellent, and the electrician firm is good and inexpensive--e.g., something we needed to do, Kolb Electric estimated it would cost $2,200, and the firm we chose offered a similar option for one-third the price, but an even cheap option that all told cost $250, plus our painting of the electric line housing), that we could put together a team that could successfully flip houses.

... so part of the cleaning process has been going through (or at least reboxing) tons of printed matter that I either read and clipped, or somehow didn't read at the time. I was skimming a Financial Times from 2017, and there was an op-ed on the likelihood of the UK developing an opioid crisis comparable to that of the US ("The Opioid Files: Follow The Post's investigation of the opioid crisis," Washington Post, and it occurred to me that wasn't likely because of the way the health care system is organized there.

The profit motive around being "a prescription drug mill" is different in the UK than in the US ("As overdoses soared, nearly 35 billion opioids — half of distributed pills — handled by 15 percent of pharmacies," Post), and doctors are less independent and subject to more oversight.

Capitalism without adequate regulation doesn't work because there are always actors willing to take advantage of gaps in regulation or opportunities for extranormal benefit.

Private capital is amoral and can generate negative outcomes as frequently as positive outcomes

Just a brief point.

Besides the problems of financialization of the economy, rentier behavior, and the agenda of capital, neoliberalism, etc. is the problem of lots of money out there, seeking some kind of positive marginal return, preferably extranormally positive returns.

I saw this title of a book review in the Guardian, "Evicted by Matthew Desmond review – what if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?," and it reminded me of this issue.

One of the problems with so much capital sloshing around in private equity is that it will fund anything.

For example, one of the reasons that Robert Mugabe stayed in power so long in Zimbabwe was because even as traditional sources of funding to governments dried up, vulture capital was willing to step in ("The investor who saved Mugabe," Mail & Guardian).

Similarly, how private equity buys up bonds issued by bankrupt government agencies in Puerto Rico, making it harder to come up with socially optimal outcomes ("'Bottom-feeding' hedge funds are big winners on Puerto Rico bonds," Financial Times).
.
Or Warren Buffett, who benefits from vulture financial loan products sold to people who buy mobile homes ("Buffett's mobile-home empire makes record profits while foreclosing on homes," Seattle Times). Even though he's pledging to give away most of his wealth on philanthropic purposes.

Etc.

As long as money is to be made, some firm is out there willing to put out the money to make it, whether its for good or ill.

UK local governments selling off public assets in face of austerity-driven budget cuts

I have mentioned from time to time how local governments in the UK have been devastated by cuts to their budgets by the national government, justified by austerity, or the non-Keynesian approach to macroeconomic fiscal policy focused on reducing government expenditures and deficits rather than expanding the economy in the face of economic downturns.

Arguably, a justification for austerity derives from neoliberalism and its ideological position that government action and spending is always inferior to the market.

From the Guardian article "Neoliberalism's 'trade not aid' approach to development ignored past lessons: Neoliberal development policy was radical and abstract, but its uncompromising approach proved dangerous in the real world":

Neoliberalism is often used today as shorthand for any idea that is pro-market and anti-government intervention, but it is actually more specific than this. Above all, it is the harnessing of such policies to support the interests of big business, transnational corporations and finance. It seeks not so much a free market, therefore, as a market free for powerful interests.

Similarly, the flip side of this is a focus on outsourcing government functions to the private sector and private financing, both of which have been shown to be more expensive and often less successful than if these functions were handled by government.

-- "Failure of outsourcing in Great Britain," 2018
-- "How part-privatising the UK probation system backfired," Financial Times

UK austerity is also in the news, with claims that cuts in budgets for policing have contributed to a rise in crime more generally ("UK Police Are Stretched by Austerity," New York Times) and more recently, knife crime ("K Knife Crime Rises. Are Budget Cuts to Blame?," NYT).

UK local governments have experienced cuts in budgets up to 60% and that combined with the double whammy of also being financially responsible for elder care, this has driven many governments to bankruptcy, but also selling off property.

The problem is exacerbated by restrictions on local taxation, especially taxation of residential property, which is undertaxed.

The Guardian reports ("Great British sell-off: how desperate councils sold £9.1bn of public assets") on a study of this phenomenon conducted by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and HuffPost UK.

The article discusses putting up various civic assets up for sale such as the Stretford Public Hall in Trafford and the Moseley Road Baths in Birmingham.

Both these buildings ended up being taken over by community nonprofit initiatives, with support from the nonprofit Locality and their Save Our Space campaign. From the article:

“Part of the problem is a lot of councils don’t have policies in place to think about alternatives to selling off properties to the private sector,” says Tony Armstrong, Locality’s CEO. “Councils are under a huge amount of pressure, and we definitely sympathise with them, but when they look at plugging these budget holes in the short term, once they’ve done that, they can’t do it again - and these places are lost forever.”

In a period of austerity, non-profit making services are “just seen as a drain”, Armstrong says.

“It probably sounds like jargon, but we talk about this concept of ‘social infrastructure’. It’s common sense really, but what brings communities together is the common experiences that we share, and a big part of that is the tangible, physical places where we get together.”

Also see these past Guardian articles:

-- "These squares are our squares: be angry about the privatisation of public space," 2017
-- "Britain's cash-strapped councils and the great Civic Centre sell-off," 2017
-- "Councils forced to sell off parks, buildings and art to fund basic services," 2018
-- "In the frame: two radically different plans for civic art collections," 2019

This is an issue for local government in the US, not so much with public buildings and park space, although it does happen, but with services and infrastructure, such as Chicago's disastrous long term lease deals for its public parking structures and parking meters. The city was driven to make a fast deal because they needed money to plug a $2 billion budget deficit.

-- "Financial engineering for municipalities," 2011
-- "A lesson to cities that they need to be very careful when leasing assets to public private "partnerships"," 2012
-- "Chicago's ongoing debacles: parking and governance," 2013

This also comes up with outsourcing and similar kinds of deals concerning speed cameras, parking meter revenue collection, etc.

At the federal level, outsourcing is a big deal, and hyper problematic, from the management of "camps" to house undocumented immigrants ("Are US immigrant child detention centers "concentration camps"?," Quartz) to privatized prisons (Private Prisons in the United States, The Sentencing Project)

Quote of the day: on what compels changes in law and regulation

From "Revealed: the tower block fire warnings that ministers ignored," a Guardian story about the Grenfell Tower fire disaster in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea:

“They seem to need a disaster to change regulations, rather than evidence and experience.

-- Ronnie King, Member of Parliament, a former chief fire officer and secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety

Unlike in the US, the UK doesn't require sprinklers in residential tower buildings.

Interestingly/1, I happened to come across a recent issue of Fire Protection, the magazine of the National Fire Protection Association, the professional standards and training organization. There are interesting articles there, including about how various incidents identify gaps in regulation and practice.

Interestingly/2, yesterday morning I got into an private email debate related to a historic preservation matter and the reality that individual houses under threat of demolition generally don't rise to the level of a historic landmark, so filing a nomination ultimately won't save such properties.

Someone sent me an email, criticizing me for being negative--I had responded on the HistoricWashington e-list concerning a matter in Bloomingdale. I responded to the email thusly:

It's not negative, it's focused on achieving the outcome you desire. If you submit a landmark nomination and lose, and knowing going in you have a less than 20% chance of winning, you've wasted hundreds of hours of time.

Better to focus your energies on ways you can win and achieve the outcomes you want.

Better to identify the need for remedies when they don't exist, as a way to move necessary structural changes forward.

It's also based on experience, going through a similar process -- trying to save pre-1877 frame rowhouses in the H St. neighborhood, filing a landmark nomination, and losing, because the houses didn't rise to the level of significance of an individual landmark, despite some famous associations [...].

Based on that experience, I (1) focus on identifying the structural changes necessary to achieve the outcomes we want and (2) don't file individual nominations for "single houses" when hundreds of other examples exist.

You can read the staff report on that particular case, but they use comparable language in other such cases. E.g. the Grant Circle house matter ("Historic Preservation Tuesday: 16 Grant Circle and the landscape of DC's avenues and circles as an element of the city's identity" and "Historic Preservation Tuesday: Grant Circle Historic District nomination, Thursday April 2nd").

They lost. So they moved to landmark a district, with all the buildings facing the circle.

You may recall I said the same thing then, that the individual landmark nomination wouldn't be sustained, and they followed my recommendation of seeking a district nomination, for which they were successful. But at the cost of the first house.

FWIW/1: there is the line that insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

FWIW/2, there is the line from Bismarck -- fools learn from experience, I prefer to profit from the experience of others.

Learn from the experience of people like me in failing to achieve landmark status for individual houses threatened by developers "arbitraging" the mass and density maximums that are allowable which differ from those typical of the time when the houses were constructed.

If we know that an individual landmark nomination won't sustain, then we need other options, which we currently do not have.

Which is why I'll be submitting some comp plan amendments, which won't pass but need to be out there, on mandatory design review and demolition protection.

... issues I've been raising for more than 10 years.

So the point about evidence and experience mattering but being ignored resonates.

This was the cover page of yesterday's edition of Canada's National Post.

(un?)informed electorates, democracy, and referenda

A little more than 20 years ago I went to a conference sponsored by a group affiliated with Newt Gingrich, and I remember him talking about the rise of "irredentist" movements across the world. Then particularly prominent examples were the Basque Region in Spain or the Kurds, which spread across Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.

In many respects, you can consider the Brexit vote in the UK to be an irredentist movement, vis a vis the European Union.  Ironically, it will trigger further irridentist moves within the UK as it is likely that Scotland will vote to become independent and to remain within the EU.

Not being in the UK, I only know about the campaign -- Remain or Leave -- from what I read in the online newspapers, mostly the Guardian (The London Times has always had a very strong paywall) and in print in the the Financial Times, plus articles in the US media.

Obviously, there are many parallels with the Republican campaign for President by Donald Trump. The demographics of people who support Trump -- older, whiter, less educated -- are comparable to the people favoring Brexit.

And we have a kind of irredentist movement in the US, the East and West Coast versus the interior of the country, and the rural-urban divide, and how political districts drawn for the US House of Representatives and state legislatures tend to be shaped in favor of rural interests at the expense of cities and metropolitan areas.

Media and the informed electorate.  But in the UK, while on the decline sure, newspapers are still prominent and relevant.  The London papers have national reach, especially the big "populist" tabloids like the Express or the Mail.

But there, more than in the US, the owners dictate coverage of issues, and on both the recent national election and Brexit. for the most part, especially the tabloids, were "all in" on the Conservatives and exit from the EU, and newspaper coverage of issues was manipulated in crass and craven ways to support their positions ("Power without accountability in our tabloid press" and "The triumph of the tabloids," mainly macro).

The blog mainly macro published this composite image of covers from the Daily Express which played up immigration as the UK's biggest problem.

If you can't rely on the media to be "somewhat objective," the basic requirement in democratic systems of having an informed electorate cannot be met.

Political positions versus the truth and an informed electorate.  This problem is further accentuated by the fact that "the politics" is similarly poisoned in that ideologies and agendas more than "doing the right thing" are driving elected officials and what they say.

These days politics is more about winning and imposing ideologies and agendas rather than making the right policy choices based on knowledge.  (Maybe it's always been this way, and I am merely a naif in my belief that knowledge and doing the right thing matters the most.)

For example, mainly macro ("Why do people want less EU immigration") argues that people's sentiment in favor of Brexit was largely driven by their belief that immigrants were disproportionately using the National Health Service and this is the cause of its decline.

False claim promoted by the Vote Leave campaign.  Publishers Association photo.

But their popular understanding of the decline of NHS is counter to the facts.

First, the fact that immigrants consume government services at rates less per capita, and second, pay more money to the state in taxes than they get back in services.  The real problem with NHS is that the government has been cutting funding as part of its general economic austerity program.

But the Prime Minister didn't want to tell people that.  From mainly macro:

Which means that in reality EU migration creates more resources that allows the government to spend more on the NHS and other public services. Not only do EU migrants pay for themselves in this respect, they also make access easier for natives. Add in the negative impact of making trade with the EU more difficult, and it is clear that Brexit would have a negative impact on public services. No wonder Dr Sarah Wollaston switched sides.

Yet this is an argument David Cameron was reluctant to make, because it raises an obvious question. If EU migration is not the reason why the NHS is in crisis, what is? The answer is that his government has chosen to shrink the share of national income going to the NHS, when there are good reasons why this share should be rising. In other words the government has taken the taxes EU migrants pay, and used them to cut taxes or cut the deficit. Because Cameron will not make the case for why EU migration helps the NHS, that case is not heard by voters. Instead they are told all the time that the NHS has been 'protected'.

And self interested politicians.  Others take positions to support their own interests.  Boris Johnson is a perfect example ("EU referendum live: Boris Johnson hails 'glorious opportunity' of Brexit as David Cameron resigns," Telegraph).  He wants to be Prime Minister, so he joined the Leave campaign, whereas a few years ago he was in favor of immigration, etc.

Directing fury at the wrong target.  So the rise in support for Brexit was a reaction against the austerity policies of the Conservative government, but instead of voting them out last year--the Conservatives won decisively--instead they blame the EU and vote Brexit.

Similarly, in the US the rise of the Tea Party as a conservative movement was triggered out of a ridiculous belief that President Obama is a socialist and wanted the government to take over the economy, which was their interpretation of the huge bailouts made of the financial industry in 2008-2009, which was necessary to ward off an economic depression.

Yes, the bankers weren't punished, but from the standpoint of Marxism, this was a type of "Capitalist Crisis" where capitalists required the intervention of government in order to recover and maintain overall control.  That's capitalism, not socialism -- privatizing profit, socializing risk.

Implications for democracy and the referenda process.  If you can't count on there being an informed electorate, which is further complicated by the nature of voting patterns (older people vote more, younger people vote less, poor people vote less than rich people, etc.) that can distort overall preferences, putting major policies to vote in referenda doesn't make sense ("If referendums are the answer, we’re asking the wrong question," Guardian).

Especially when you can't count on equal resources being spent to present "both sides" of the issue, let alone both sides being presented within the media, and adequately by the elected officials.