Bits 'n pieces from east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

The IRS estimates that, over the next decade, tax fraud will deprive the federal government of $7.5 trillion in revenue. But, as The Week pointed out, auditing of the nation’s richest is at a rate of 1.56 percent. It costs more to audit America’s wealthiest 1 percent than it does to audit small-time taxpayers.

Presidential candidate Kanye West, who also has achieved fame as a musician, had approximately 60,000 ballots cast for him in the recent general election, according to Time. He had been courted by affiliates of President Donald Trump to run. They hoped West would siphon votes from President-elect Joe Biden. Biden won by the highest percentage of the popular vote of any candidate since 1932. He is, as of this writing, 5.6 million votes ahead of Trump.

According to U.S. law, state electors are presumably valid if chosen by Dec. 8. Electors cast their votes on Dec. 14. On Jan. 6, the newly sworn-in Congress counts the results and the vice president pronounces them as official. But the Washington Post has reported that Trump is proposing that state legislators pick electors favorable to him to create “a viable path to an electoral college victory,” and this is “being considered at the highest levels.”

The Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, composed of federal, state and local officials, declared that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history” and “there is no evidence of tampering with any voting systems.” The Trump campaign has been saying that some computers in some states switched Trump votes to Biden votes.

There was an all-time high of 181,000 new COVID-19 cases in just one day in the U.S. last week, with 1,389 deaths that day. But in the Senate, instead of focusing on financial relief, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has ignored the House COVID-19 aid proposal (which includes an extension of unemployment benefits). McConnell is instead focusing on confirming federal judges.

“We had an opportunity twice over the past eight months to bring [COVID-19] down to safer levels and we failed. We are on the verge of losing control of this pandemic,” Jack Chow told the Washington Post. He was a health official under former President George W. Bush.

Chow said it’s the duty of the president to protect national security, “and this is the most prominent disease of mass destruction America’s ever faced, and we have a commander in chief who has run away from the problem and has made it worse.”

After reaching 270 electoral votes, the president-elect normally begins the transition process, including attending daily national security briefings. Similarly, transition team members begin meeting with executive branch staff. So far, the administrator of the General Services Administration is blocking that process. Media are speculating that it’s not just spite at work: Trump may be worried about how the briefings could cast his leadership in a poor light.

Biden is taking preparatory action anyway, especially regarding COVID-19. He has pointed out that his vice president-elect sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, providing access to some information.

Federal prosecutors assigned to monitor the elections say they saw no “substantial irregularities,” the Washington Post reported. In a letter, the prosecutors urged Attorney General William Barr to discontinue using resources for what they see as partisan politics. Trump has appointed Rudy Giuliani to head his lawsuits challenging the election outcome.

The Associated Press analyzed 376 counties with the highest COVID-19 cases and found that the Trump vote prevailed in 93 percent of those counties.

Contrary to expectations, time-out for COVID-19 has not resulted in a baby boom. Professors of economics at Wellesley College say every 1 percent increase in unemployment typically results in a 1.4 percent drop in the birth rate.

Blast from the past: In the 1850s, the Republican party stood up to wealthy southern slaveholders, the latter making up just 1 percent of the American South, where they ran the Democratic Party and defended slavery, according to Boston University history professor Heather C. Richardson. To amass power and expand beyond their numbers, the southern Dems sought to draw poor whites to their cause, arguing that freeing blacks would elevate them above poor whites.

South Carolina Sen. James Hammond saw the threat to southern elite’s comfortable lifestyle if blacks could vote, and warned that would lead to society being reconstructed, the government overthrown and property divided. That was the backdrop for Abraham Lincoln’s run for the presidency, and his platform of supporting ordinary men over the wealthy. He won the 1860 election and the southern states withdrew from the U.S.

After an expensive Civil War, a national system of taxation was created, including an income tax to pay for the war effort. As the tide of war turned in favor of the U.S. government, he reminded the nation, “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”