As usual, I seem to view the world about 80 degrees off from my associates in the media, so I still try to keep on on original sources instead of taking the “journalists’” word. For example, I took the time last week to watch the House Judiciary Committee’s testimony from Attorney General William Barr, and it raised a question I have not seen addressed.

The Majority announced in the first minutes that they are considering Barr for impeachment. This becomes important later.

In a nutshell, as I assume you have seen and heard on the news, the Majority gave Barr almost no time to answer questions. He was harangued, accused and insulted a lot, but whenever a substantive claim was made against him, the questioner would cut him off, interrupt and demand “reclaiming my time.” A few even used their full five minutes to rage at Barr and Trump and yield back without asking any question, and Barr was not allowed to answer.

You can make of that what you will. To me, I think the House could use an adjustment to its rules.

However, let’s go back to impeachment. As I have shared before, in a former life I worked for a state welfare bureaucracy and have since been an investigative reporter. I am not a lawyer, but I had to take law classes in grad school. So it occurs to me that if I had an errant cop under oath and on broadcast television, I would be inclined to ask open-ended questions and then let him talk. The more he talks, the more likely he is to perjure himself or make an error. The judging body should have very little interest in my questions, but if I do a good job, it should be very interested in the witness’s answers. So the Majority had five hours to goad Barr into saying something dumb, and they didn’t use it.

To me, that is more than slightly curious. Obviously, it would be nice to know why, since I doubt the AG will respond quickly to a second request. It’s like Congress getting a free wish from a genie and asking for a selfie.

Possibly they did not drop the ball, at all. I have heard some of them rage about Trump stealing all the media oxygen with his hours-long news conferences and events. Ads cost money, and maybe the Democrats had little interest in impeaching Barr, at all. Maybe his role was to sit there and be a foil for speechifying on the media’s nickel.

Anyway, it was a circus. I will be interested to see whether anybody polls public opinion on it. Cirque du Soleil is bankrupt because of Covid, so maybe Congress is looking for a new revenue stream.

One of the Democrat congressmen announced in his presentation that, so far, Covid has cost the U.S. 100,000 businesses that are dead and not coming back. He did not cite his sources. Congressmen and congresswomen don’t need to. I will never forget Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – the multi-millionaire-real-estate-broker from Nevada announcing on the Senate floor in 2012 that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had not paid taxes in 10 years. Later, when confronted with the fact that he had lied, Reid said, “I don’t regret that at all. Romney didn’t win, did he?”

Some people think this is now the American way. I don’t, and I think it demands a conversation as to whether we should bring back horse-whipping, tarring and feathering and riding out of town on a rail. For both parties.

If what the Democrat congressman said in the committee hearing was true, and we have no reason to believe that it was, then 100,000 businesses is a big number, and you likely know some of them.

If you know some of them, then you understand that when we come out of this, all hell is going to break loose. There will be demand that the 100,000 are not there to fill. There will be supplies that the 100,000 are not there to buy. So… I just said supply and demand in two sentences, and anybody with a grade-school grasp of economics knows that means something. On the other hand, we don’t seem to have a consensus among Ph.D.s in economics as to WHAT it means.

For one thing, I think the wood-products industry needs to lock arms, join heads and be thinking. Unlike in Congress, it may help.

There are some interesting lessons being taught in the current unrest – lessons I don’t see others picking-up on. I have mentioned before, and I am not proud of this, but it’s real, that I was on the radical left in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I lived in communes, hitchhiked the country, attended riots – the works. All those things that were “not wrong unless you think it’s wrong.” Like many, I was a bright kid, I could see injustice and I fell for the siren song of the dark side. In the matters following, I know what I’m talking about. 

In no particular order, I think the Atlanta rioters’ attack on the CNN building is significant. How many of us have passed CNN every-other August as we make our way from the IWF venue to our hotels? How many of us have stopped for a bit to watch the kids play in the fountains at Centennial Park? To us, CNN and Centennial Park are stationary points in the wheels within wheels – the  ebb and flow of trade shows, associations, suppliers, attendees, local venues, international venues, annual and semi-annual events – a kaleidoscope of business anchoring itself back to Atlanta, back to Milan, back to Cologne, back to Toronto and back to Las Vegas as the players change and companies come and go. It is part of our life. 

There has been no greater sycophant for the lost causes of the left than CNN. That is a professional assessment from a media professional. It was a leader in the now-debunked Russia Collusion narrative designed to take down a duly elected president. There is not a liberal cause it has not endorsed. There is a compelling academic case to be made that CNN is the worst enemy of democracy and free speech on earth. It believes in free speech for itself and nobody else, and it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is seditious. 

Therefore, it is nothing short of amazing that the Atlanta rioters would attack CNN’s headquarters – if you don’t understand the rioters. They have no respect for CNN. To them, CNN is an empty logo and a useful idiot, dutifully pandering to any pablum du jour the masters put in their bowl. But to the overall picture of the left, CNN is weak. It got attacked because it is weak and there was opportunity to occupy a symbol. There is no honor among thieves.  

Why do they do this? Finally, the news media seem to be reporting the truth. They do this because those are their orders. There are outside puppet-masters. When I was attending these things, never at a high level, we were told to watch for signals. The crowd handlers would all be wearing a sign. Maybe it was an R. Crumb t-shirt. Maybe it was a style of hat, but it was an insignia – notice that this person was coordinating. I watched over the weekend to see if I can still see the captains, but I can’t. For a while I thought it was a skateboard. For a while it seems like it was a harness. But I can’t be sure what it was; I just know something is organizing. 

The news talks about cop strategies – reinforcement, reserves, mobility, deploy, tear gas, flash-bangs, rubber bullets. But they miss the fact that the organizers not only have the same strategies, but that they are highly sophisticated. They counter maneuver with maneuver, tactic for tactic. They have been trained. In fact, if you distinguish yourself as an instigator, you get a paid trip overseas to learn more, a paid trip home and a cell number. Your Guy Fawkes mask is in your closet with your uniform, and you are on call. Minneapolis cops are not maneuvering against domestic hysteria; they are maneuvering against a sovereign enemy power. 

There is an old description of Marxist protocols that rates people as True Believers, Fellow Travelers and Useful Idiots. I’m not sure whether that is actually the nomenclature used at the top levels of the agitators, but it works. The rioters, for the most part, are Useful Idiots. Cannon fodder. Kids with a selfie machine out for a night with a picture of themselves doing something meaningful and a new pair of Nikes. Some will die, some will go to jail. No problem. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. It is, of course, critical that the defenders are handcuffed. They cannot use lethal force. That would make us like China, Russia and Iran. This is in the playbook.  

But while you’re watching, note how many young, whitish girls are confronting the police among all the other miscreants. This is by design. There is nothing so moving as a damsel in distress, and the more women get hurt, the better the propaganda. As for all the cute little whitish girls with their kitschy slogans on their midriff-baring tops, they are being used. I was there when their grandmothers were on those same streets, proudly burning bras as evidence of their power. You will note that reality sets in. 

Moving over to Minneapolis, I was there, too. The West Bank was the Bohemian hangout for the indigent in those days. The riots then were Natives protesting arrests at Wounded Knee where an FBI agent was killed. The brother of a friend of mine was killed there. Bob Randall. Minneapolis is not the naïve, “Ya, youbetcha” haven of beer-swillng Norskies. Not entirely. It has a dark underside. 

In Minneapolis, the inexcusable happened. The rioters targeted the Third Precinct, and the cops skedaddled. They ran, and the vermin occupied the precinct, looted it and burned it to the ground. Irrespective of whether you like or don’t like the police, a precinct building is a symbol of American law and order – American freedom from tyranny. And they ran. 

This, of course, emboldened the handlers and the order went out to try for another before the cops could regroup. The attempt was made, and it failed. Thank God. But we can never again say as a culture that our institutions are safe or that they have not been defiled. And we have given the puppet-masters a win, an objective and a narrative. Minneapolis should be ashamed, because they have done this to all of us. They failed. Now we all pay. 

Notably, this rioting is not about police brutality. Police brutality is not new. We have bad cops. We had bad cops in Rome, in Medieval Britain, in Renaissance Italy and in the Irish immigration. The police were brutal in the ‘60s. Looking back, maybe it was necessary. 

We need to take race out of this. I really can’t understand how George Floyd’s skin color is relevant. He was a man. A son. A citizen. What happened to him appears wrong and criminal. There must be justice. However, a question remains whether Floyd was killed because he is black, or because his killer is a psychopath. Many good people go into law enforcement. So do psychopaths. There appears no way to screen for them, but they have been around forever. After all, what better career for somebody that wants to push others around? 

But let’s say Chauvin is a racist. Could be, for my money. If he is, does that, then, suggest that racism is endemic in all police forces and riots are warranted? To me, it does not. To me, I see the propaganda, the results and the reporting. I do not see that a psychopath renegade in Minneapolis is cause to try and kill police in Dallas, New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. 

I see a bunch of luminaries are falling over themselves, pleading with the rioters to be peaceful. Does anybody seriously think that is productive? Seriously? The whole idea of the rioters is to discipline you. If you watch, there is nothing sane about it. Ostensibly, this one is over race. So why, then, do we see white girls and white boys looting black businesses? Why does a white girl throw a Molotov cocktail in the back of an occupied police cruiser? The luminaries can beg and cry. After all, that’s what luminaries do best. The rest of us have to deal with reality. 

You are being played. The puppet-masters are not our friends. The puppet-masters do not respect color, religion or sex. In fact, we were told to recruit women. Women, they said, are emotional, weak and manipulable. In positions of power, they can be managed. Don’t shoot me. I’m just a reporter. 

“Justice” in this context is just a euphemism for replacing the current political system with a new one – one in which the participants hope to take what is not theirs and make what has not been. Call it Eden, call it Utopia or call it whatever. Unfortunately, at some point on the road the shooting starts in earnest. 

It all ended last time on May 4, 1970, on a football field in Canton, Ohio. All the fun. All the looting. All the excitement. The National Guard opened fire with live ammunition, and four kids were dead, and nine injured. In retrospect, it is thought the Guardsmen thought they were shooting over the heads of the crowd, but the bullets traveled over a rise about 300 yards out and hit victims there. Could be. On the other hand, 67 rounds were fired, with 13 casualties. That’s a 20 percent hit ratio, which is pretty high for random, even in a crowd. 

In any event, everybody lost. America lost its innocence. Protesters lost their sense of freedom, right to expression and safety. Law enforcement lost its claim to benevolent authority.  

Well, not everybody lost. The puppet masters got their goal. There was a narrative. A record. An event that lives in infamy. Cops are bad. Society is bad. Capitalism is bad. Democracy doesn’t work. Quite a legacy. 

What is the end-game? Is it “justice” for George Floyd? Not a bit. Floyd was a convenient excuse. Cannon fodder. The end game is the keys to the treasury and the keys to the arsenal. The same as always, and the mercenaries get to loot. The infamous 16^th Century political strategist Nicollo Machiavelli said it best: “The other and better course (than military) is to send colonies to one or two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is necessary either to do this or else to keep there a great number of cavalry and infantry. A prince does not spend much on colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of the citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new inhabitants.” 

What is happening in America today is not about the innocent death of man by a psychopath. It is about the siege of freedom. Che Guevara said when the elements of a revolution do not exist, they can be created. It appears to me that is working. I am interested to see who comes forward to take the reins. Who is our new Lenin? He’s out there. I can smell him, and when he rises, he will have no more interest in sharing with his minions than they had compassion for CNN. That’s why they’re called idiots. 

One basic rule of economics that every business owner should know is that when there is a recession, most businesses that fail don’t fail during the fall. They fail during the recovery. There are many reasons for this, but basically people have maxed out their lines of credit, cut all the costs they could and reduced inventory. When the economy rebounds, orders come in but they can’t get credit, can’t get materials, can’t hire labor and can’t deliver, a competitor steps in, customer are lost and another business gets shuttered.

That’s the negative side. It’s a call to strategize – planning – to balance human, material and fiscal resources against an uncertain breakout period.

There are, however, significant upsides. 

First, despite the plaintive cried of the media, we are not in a recession. Check the definition. To qualify as a recession, we need to have two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Granted, we may be on our way, but we are not there, yet.

Assuming we meet the technical definition of a recession in coming months, and we may, the economic fundamentals before the shutdown were solid. Going into a recession, they are not. That is why recessions happen.

Taking a look at fundamentals, the GDP – what can we say? – the GDP stinks. That’s why we may be going into a recession. However, the stock market is alive, if up and down. As of presstime, it seems inclined to be up, but these are uncertain times. In any event, the market has partially recovered from its steepest drops so far and is likely to be giddy if the transition out of the shutdown shows promise, a vaccine is approved, a treatment is discovered, etc. Uncertainty, I guess, is the new certainty. Real estate and durable goods seem solid at the moment, and low gas prices should help limit costs going forward.

Another driver of economic data is the unemployment rate. Allowed to run free, that alone, could drive panic. It is not good. However, the unemployment rate is generally viewed as jobs lost. In this environment, it may be better to view many or most of them as jobs paused, although that is not a current category.

Others may show up as jobs moved, although that is not a current category, either. People that once were employed in such a Covid-vulnerable position as hospitality or entertainment may be ready to find something more stable. Factory work may not be pretty or have such nice uniforms, but right now it offers a good chance of work. 

One thing I keep wondering is how this new protocol for restaurants is supposed to work. All the media and government seem content to propose that restaurants can all open up with half the seating. I am not a restaurateur, but my knowledge of the business side says you need to sell each table so many times during a shift at such-and-such a rate or you go out of business. I also understand that food service is a very competitive and unfriendly business, and most establishments simply cannot take a 50 percent hit in revenues. Big surprise. Neither can trade magazines. Neither can cabinet or millwork shops – not that I know of.

There may be a slight up-side if you need to pay down debt in coming months. It looks to me like a certain amount of inflation is inevitable. The pundits seem to disagree, but what do I know? They say tometo; I say tomato. However, if there is inflation, and if we can avoid getting into variable-rate loans, it may ease some of the pain.

Another, tangential, matter is that during this situation there have been two kinds of people – people that are getting a check and people that are not. Among the people that are not missing a payday are the public-sector unions, NGO staffs, corporate employees and officers, etc. Among those not getting a check are, unless I miss my guess, you. The idea that small-business owners will have to work harder for less so we can help the leisure classes drift and float may become more than we can bear.

Finally, one good friend and confident observed last week that, “A lot of people are going to get rich from this.” I wish I could say I didn’t believe him, but I can’t. If that happens, and if it is visible and reported by our drifting and floating media, I predict some people are going to get really, really, mad.

I am one that believes there is opportunity in change, so I think we should do some research. What may be some new trends, will the supply chains of recent years remain intact, will building permits and starts respond to pent-up demand and will there be upward or downward pressure on labor resources? All good questions, in my opinion. I wish I had the answers, but I think we can make some good guesses. It all goes back to planning.

 
There is plenty of chatter in the other media about the coronavirus. Government is doing what it can. The citizenry is doing what it’s doing. Business, however, is dumbstruck, staring at the passing events like the proverbial deer in the headlights. No visible options. 
 
There is much that is being unsaid. For example, with the borders in various stages of shutdown, it is reasonable to expect that the international trade in illegal drugs will suffer. That means some users will start feeling a lot of pressure to fix a hurt, and they will become more dangerous. Similarly, there are folks out there that have a drinking problem, but they deny they are “alcoholic” because they don’t drink at work or don’t drink in the morning, or whatever. With nothing to do, no work to “get caught” at and a bit of money relief, it is reasonable to expect their bottoms will come crashing up to meet them. That’s the tip of the iceberg, and this idea of social distance, while wise and prudent, may have the unintended consequence of making some people view their neighbours as enemies, rather than resources. There may be social disruption. 
 
But you work in the wood industry. Right now, it does not look good. As you know, new construction has essentially stopped. I spoke with a friend in real estate over the weekend. He says nobody wants to enter somebody else’s house for a viewing, and nobody want strangers in their homes. We can assume that sales and installations will grind to a halt for the near term. 
 
That creates the imperative that we look to the future, but with what facts? Well, for one, the need for secondary wood products and services will not end. The demand will still be there, no matter what. For now, that demand is not being and will not be satisfied, so it falls into the category of pent-up demand or residual demand for now. 
 
Another fact is that government is pushing a lot of money trying to sustain businesses. It remains to be seen how effective this will be, but we are all hoping. If it works, it will sustain the economy for a while, and pent-up demand will hold. We are all looking toward some of the interim fixes and hoping they will work. China is claiming short periods of no new cases in Wuhan. The medical community is voicing hope over hydroxy-chloroquine and some anti-ebola drugs. If these fixes work and make it into rapid distribution, this whole exercise could be over in a month. If not, not. 

 
Let’s go back to school. An industry is not just a bunch of people doing the same stuff. An industry has some kind of glue – shared interests, problems and goals – that hold it together as an industry. 
 
The fact is, there are three primary means by which an industry becomes and remains an industry – the glue, if you will. Those means are trade shows, associations and media. In this case, our media is magazines in whatever format. 
 
However, the next big show, Xylexpo in Milan, is now cancelled. IWF next August in Atlanta is threatened. The associations are forbidden to associate, and we have had a hard time getting reader- (customer-) level associations to fly. We are seeing some progress, there, but they aren’t ready to represent the industry as a whole.  

The matter of supplier-level associations worth noting. Associations in general have evolved into massive engines designed basically to tap into the income stream of an industry and support a nice lifestyle for their managers. Their tactics have basically devolved into introducing barriers to trade through inconsequential standards or certifications and offering golf tournaments and group insurance. 

A few, however, seem to grasp that the idea of an association is to associate. That, to combine many small voices into one loud voice. A voice loud enough to be heard by lawmakers, markets and associates. Take, for example, the Wood Machinery Manufacturers of America. The WMMA has a history of calling their federal representatives in advance, gathering once a year in the Washington, D.C., area, and heading up to lobby Congress on matters of interest to the members. They also hire lobbyists to monitor and respond to legal matters that affect their side of our industry, as warranted. 

So shows and manufacturers’ associations are disabled at the moment. That leaves media. 
 
You may be of the opinion that all magazines are dinosaurs or that any magazine that dies will be replaced, or that trade magazines are nothing but stenographers for their top four advertisers. You have cause to make those conclusions. 
 
However, our quandary is this. We see revenues drying up. 
 
This is an unequal comparison, but during WWII, Procter and Gamble continued to advertise toothpaste and other products, despite that those products were rationed and could not capitalize on any increase in demand causes by those ads. Their rationale at the time was that the customer loyalty engendered by those ad programs – the support and acknowledgement of the trials of the customers – would carry them forward after the war. 
 

War is a good analogy. I saw on the news yesterday that somebody said coronavirus is not a war. I can’t find the source any longer, and it has been covered over with all kinds of demands to accept war as an appropriate analogy. I think the idea is worth looking at. 

First, war is between enemy societies. This is not. It seems to be an equal-opportunity destroyer. During WWII, which actually was a war, the British government asked its citizens to go about their daily business – that the underlying economic engine that sustained the empire had to run. Our government is asking us to do the opposite. 

I am not arguing that the government’s approach is wrong. I guess we’ll figure that out in hindsight. But we can’t hide secrets, kill saboteurs or launch a counterstrike against fixed targets. It’s more like society is fighting a weapon that has no operators. 

On the other hand, maybe it is a war. After all, during the Blitz, the Brits did everything they could to destroy the weapons via searchlights, anti-aircraft guns, fighter aircraft and, yes, hiding in the subways. So I guess it’s an exercise people can undertake if they need to kill time. 

For Wood Industry, we need to decide how much to add. Magazines have have spam and video options. One magazine in another sector last weekend hit me with four so-called “critical” copy-and-paste digital jobs. I am not one given to flying the middle finger, fingers being analog digits, as they are, but if I get one more oh-so-compassionate admonition from a hotel chain that I remember to wash my hands, I may be so inspired. They don’t care about me. Never have. As I’ve said many times, there are problems with digital. In this case, “digital” does not convey the Procter and Gamble message of unity. 
 
The conclusion? I need to hear from you if you have an opinion. I don’t mean you have to vote with your dollars. I mean I need to hear what you think. You can see your problems from your perspective. I can see your problems from mine.  

Given that we have the option of digital communication, we have no intention of bothering you, declaring war or selling toilet paper. We can, however, monitor construction and funding, give tips on personnel management, talk a bit about tracking and recording damages and so on, and that is our intent. 

We also have fairly strong research resources, so let us know if you have any questions that are not getting answered elsewhere. As for where this all ends? My guess is that we’ll all be an industry, and we’ll have the glue we need to hold together. Between here and there seems a bit of a bitch.