{"id":43980,"date":"2020-03-20T15:09:13","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T20:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=43980"},"modified":"2020-03-20T15:10:16","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T20:10:16","slug":"republican-motto-government-doesnt-work-elect-us-and-well-prove-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2020\/03\/20\/republican-motto-government-doesnt-work-elect-us-and-well-prove-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican motto: “Government doesn’t work. Elect us and we’ll prove it.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From today’s New York Times<\/em> story<\/a>: “Trump Resists Pressure to Force Companies to Make New Coronavirus Supplies,” by Katie Rogers, Maggie Haberman, and Ana Swanson (20 March 2020).<\/p>\n

Some of Mr. Trump\u2019s advisers have privately said they are adhering to longstanding conservative opposition to big government, a view that reflects the administration\u2019s conflicted view of how it should handle a crisis unlike any a modern president has faced.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, and they are doing a lot of this work,\u201d Mr. Trump said to reporters on Thursday. \u201cThe federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we\u2019re not a shipping clerk.\u201d. . .<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not all of Mr. Trump\u2019s advisers subscribe to the theory that the federal government should be as hands-off as possible. Some of his aides believe there needs to be a shift toward using the law and have suggested this to the president.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the threat of the coronavirus has worsened, officials leading the Trump administration\u2019s response have resisted setting priorities in favor of letting private companies determine their own roles, a stance that has confounded Mr. Trump\u2019s critics but which officials say is a small-government approach that the president\u2019s advisers prefer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But people familiar with the administration\u2019s actions say the administration is still trying to figure how industry supply chains operate, which companies could produce additional products, and what kind of subsidies they may need to offer . . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a call held with Mr. Trump at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters on Thursday, a group of governors stressed to him that they were struggling to address the staggering demand for equipment and supplies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point, Gov. Kristi Noem, Republican of South Dakota, grew frustrated as she expressed to the president and members of the task force that state officials had been working unsuccessfully with private suppliers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI need to understand how you\u2019re triaging supplies,\u201d Ms. Noem said. \u201cWe, for two weeks, were requesting reagents for our public health lab from C.D.C., who pushed us to private suppliers who kept canceling orders on us. And we kept making requests, placing orders.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

She added: \u201cI don\u2019t want to be less of a priority because we\u2019re a smaller state or less populated.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump promised her that would \u201cnever\u201d happen before Ms. Noem\u2019s telephone line was disconnected.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From today’s New York Times story: “Trump Resists Pressure to Force Companies to Make New Coronavirus Supplies,” by Katie Rogers, Maggie Haberman, and Ana Swanson (20 March 2020). Some of Mr. Trump\u2019s advisers have privately said they are adhering to longstanding conservative opposition to big government, a view that reflects the administration\u2019s conflicted view of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43985,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43980\/revisions\/43985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}