newrepublic--2020-03-31--The Health Insurance Crisis at Our Doorstep

This is not just a hypothetical problem of CoronaWorld ; it is a living reality for the nation ’ s poor , a routine horror that will merely expand and intensify over the next few months .
States like Texas kick children and their parents off Medicaid because monthly variations in income—even temporary ones—render them ineligible .
Other times , the state just makes a mistake , too arbitrary and inscrutable for the average person to divine and correct .
ProPublica reported last week on the case of a South Carolina woman with Covid-19 and chronic pain whose Medicaid was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little explanation other than it had made a mistake ” in initially giving her coverage .
She lives on less than $ 1,000 a month in Social Security income and food stamps .
How is she supposed to purchase health insurance on her own ?
Who will pay if she goes to the emergency room unable to breathe ?
Who will answer for her death if she delays going to the emergency room until it is too late , because she knows the bills could throw her into financial ruin ?
Who will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her and countless others ?
If Medicaid or Medicare were simply available to all , regardless of income , there would be no bureaucrat tasked with striking off grandmothers whom they deem to be slightly too wealthy to deserve health insurance .
For those with high enough incomes to require them to use the Affordable Care Act exchanges instead , they will be asked to estimate their annual income—no easy task under the best of circumstances but far less so when you ’ re living through a pandemic with no clear end in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , say because they quickly get hired in another job or because their furlough is shorter than anticipated , they may have to pay back the subsidies they received on their health care in next year ’ s taxes .
Heaven forbid anyone should get their insurance too cheaply in this country .
Again , this is not restricted to people making a good living : A single person making $ 36,000 a year in Erie County , New York , would be eligible for around $ 215 in tax credits per month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the end , that number goes down to $ 131 per month , or a difference of about $ 1,000 over a year .
( For people in that income bracket , the amount they ’ ll have to pay the government back is capped at $ 1,300 .
Another wonderful and generous favor from our federal government . )
It will be even worse in some parts of the country .
In states that haven ’ t expanded Medicaid , millions already don ’ t qualify for Medicaid based solely on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same time , they don ’ t make enough to qualify for subsidies on the exchange .
The technocratic brilliance of the exchange system was to provide Medicaid up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and provide upfront tax credits for those who made a penny more .
This did not anticipate a Supreme Court ruling allowing states to refuse to expand Medicaid .
And so we have a 17.7 percent uninsured rate in Texas .
As people are laid off , with no option to sign up for Medicaid based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dozen states , that number may spike .
How high does it have to go before we say , “ no more ?
”

ProPublica reported last week on the case of a South Carolina woman with Covid-19 and chronic pain whose Medicaid was canceled by the state, “with little explanation other than it had made a mistake” in initially giving her coverage. She lives on less than $1,000 a month in Social Security income and food stamps. How is she supposed to purchase health insurance on her own? Who will pay if she goes to the emergency room unable to breathe? Who will answer for her death if she delays going to the emergency room until it is too late, because she knows the bills could throw her into financial ruin? Who will answer for the misery America forces upon her and countless others? If Medicaid or Medicare were simply available to all, regardless of income, there would be no bureaucrat tasked with striking off grandmothers whom they deem to be slightly too wealthy to deserve health insurance.
For those with high enough incomes to require them to use the Affordable Care Act exchanges instead, they will be asked to estimate their annual income—no easy task under the best of circumstances but far less so when you’re living through a pandemic with no clear end in sight. If they underestimate their income, say because they quickly get hired in another job or because their furlough is shorter than anticipated, they may have to pay back the subsidies they received on their health care in next year’s taxes. Heaven forbid anyone should get their insurance too cheaply in this country. Again, this is not restricted to people making a good living: A single person making $36,000 a year in Erie County, New York, would be eligible for around $215 in tax credits per month. If that person makes $45,000 in the end, that number goes down to $131 per month, or a difference of about $1,000 over a year. (For people in that income bracket, the amount they’ll have to pay the government back is capped at $1,300. Another wonderful and generous favor from our federal government.)
It will be even worse in some parts of the country. In states that haven’t expanded Medicaid, millions already don’t qualify for Medicaid based solely on having lost their income. At the same time, they don’t make enough to qualify for subsidies on the exchange. The technocratic brilliance of the exchange system was to provide Medicaid up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and provide upfront tax credits for those who made a penny more. This did not anticipate a Supreme Court ruling allowing states to refuse to expand Medicaid. And so we have a 17.7 percent uninsured rate in Texas. As people are laid off, with no option to sign up for Medicaid based solely on low income in more than a dozen states, that number may spike. How high does it have to go before we say, “no more?”


newrepublic--2020-03-31--How America’s Newspapers Covered Up a Pandemic

When Donald Trump first declared that the coronavirus shutdown would be over by Easter , he was embracing a hallowed American tradition of happy-talk denial .
As the polymath president ( part wartime leader , part Nobel-level epidemiologist ) said last week , “ Our people are full of vim and vigor and energy .
They don ’ t want to be locked into a house or an apartment or some space .
It ’ s not for our country , and we are not built that way.
” America was never built that way , as the history of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In October 1918 alone , 195,000 Americans died from the virus .
Yet President Woodrow Wilson , obsessed with a war in Europe that would end on November 11 , made no public references to the disease .
And states received no assistance from Washington , not even from the Food and Drug Administration .
Meanwhile , the big-city newspapers—the dominant news sources in the days before radio—sugarcoated the truth , practicing an alarming level of self-censorship .
Any article or headline suggesting more than casual concern about the disease would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the home front during the Great War .
“ As terrifying as the disease was , the press made it more so , ” John M. Barry wrote in his epic history , The Great Influenza .
“ They terrified by making so little of it , for what officials and the press said bore no relationship to what people saw and touched and smelled and endured .
People could not trust what they read .
”

Mournful stories on the front page of both the upmarket two-cent Globe and the penny Post revealed that New England was falling behind its quota in bond subscriptions for the fourth Liberty Loan—the 1918 equivalent of Trump’s obsession with the stock market. As the Post warned in an editorial over the banner and above the war news, “If we here fail to raise our quota until the final day it gives the impression that New England is behind the rest of the country. The place for New England is at the front whether it is buying bonds or responding to the nation’s call for men.”
As for influenza, that was merely the day’s third story, carefully downplayed to modest, one-column, front-page articles in both papers. At least the Post headline was honest in its assessment: “No Gain on the Epidemic in Boston.” And a sober subhead reported, “191 Deaths Yesterday—Situation Remains Grave.” There was, however, a bit of hopeful spin: “Health authorities are encouraged that the increase is but a small one.”
The Globe went further, claiming in a subhead, “Cases Show Decrease.” That upbeat conclusion required aggressive juggling of statistics; the author had compared the day’s deaths to the high point earlier in the week. But a chart that the Globe buried on page nine revealed the underlying truth: Deaths from influenza (now more than 2,000 in a city of 700,000) had increased virtually every day since mid-September.


newrepublic--2020-03-31--Policing and the English Language

Policing and the English Language

And yet , the DOJ observed , nowhere in their TRRs did the officers indicate “ how many strikes they delivered , where they landed , or why each was necessary.
” The officers admitted the man had been injured , but they offered no account of exactly how or why .
“ In the man ’ s booking photo , he has abrasions on his face , ” the DOJ laconically concluded .
In such incidents , it is clear , these reports function as a kind of sanitizing fig leaf over raw violence .
They ’ re judiciously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ register as the familiar yelled cop command to “ stop resisting , ” which usually comes at the very moment that the cop in question is striking a suspect who is long past the point of being able to do much but sag to the ground and curl up in a fetal position .
There are still other paradoxes .
Police departments regularly pride themselves on professionalism , “ community ” relations , and general restraint .
But their claims of prudence sit uneasily alongside the bald aggression of acronyms for task forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bureau Hoodlums ) , a notorious outfit that the LAPD founded in 1973 , and renamed to the slightly more palatable CRASH ( substituting “ community ” for “ total ” and “ street ” for “ South Bureau ” ) , which operated until 2000 ; or BOSS ( Bureau of Special Services ) , which the NYPD deployed against black radicals , among other groups , from the 1950s to the 1970s .
In L.A. , SWAT , perhaps the most celebrated cop acronym of all , did not start out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” but rather as “ Special Weapons Attack Teams , ” a phrase dreamed up by the LAPD ’ s Daryl F. Gates , who in his memoirs says being forced to modify the name by PR-conscious superiors made him feel “ crestfallen.
” But that was the late 1960s—today , with police militarized like never before , and Punisher skulls plastered on more than a few patrol cars nationwide , the original name might be welcomed .
Coptalk , in any case , is defined by one paradox above all : a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rationality , alongside the police ’ s conversation-ending deference to their own invocations of that most irrational of affects , fear .
The scholar and theorist Rei Terada , writing of the distressing regularity with which police shoot the mentally ill ( or as they ’ ve been known in coptalk , “ emotionally disturbed persons , ” or EDPs ) , notes , “ From the perspective of the police , resisting arrest is necessarily irrational : they perceive irrational people as resisters , even if that isn ’ t their intention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Drawing a gun , shining a flashlight , and yelling at anyone will understandably terrify that person ; for a child , or for someone who is intoxicated or suffering mental health issues , this effect is even more likely .
Yet if you hesitate too long or move the wrong way , if you make a gesture that could possibly be conceived as threatening , within seconds , the police can end you .
To be in fear for their lives is the police ’ s criterion for deploying deadly force , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what cops cite as proof that they had no choice but to kill you .
“ That ’ s what the higher-ups tell officers to say when something goes awry , ” observed Matthew Horace , a distinguished police veteran of both state and federal law enforcement .
“ You learn it in the police academy and it becomes the mantra of every officer when any shootings occur .
And who can prove that you weren ’ t in fear for your life , even if the fear was caused by something improper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long as there have been police in America , there has been coptalk .
But the euphemism and officialese have appeared to worsen over the decades .
The headlines that followed the killing of Clifford Glover seem , in retrospect , almost bracingly straightforward .
“ Office Kills a Suspect , 10 ; a Murder Charge is Filed ” proclaimed The New York Times the next day .
As the journalist Thomas Hauser documents in his excellent 1980 history of the episode , The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea , the public outcry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Clifford himself was dead , and so Shea ’ s defenders , the Patrolmen ’ s Benevolent Association ( PBA ) , focused on disparaging the only civilian left standing .
For their part , the prosecution delivered a bombshell .
After getting Scott to nail down his supposed movements in the lot , and confirm his insistence that he had had a brief but entirely professional interaction with the fatally wounded Clifford , the prosecution revealed that those moments had in fact been recorded by their walkie-talkies .
And then , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a tape of patrolman Scott , standing above a dying child whom he had insisted he thought was a normal-size adult , clearly saying , Die , you little fuck .

In describing their actions, one officer checked the boxes for “takedown/emergency handcuffing” and “closed hand strike/punch;” the second checked “open hand strike,” “takedown/emergency handcuffing,” “closed hand strike/punch,” and “kick;” a third officer checked “wristlock,” “arm bar,” “takedown/emergency handcuffing,” “closed hand strike/punch,” and “knee strike;” and the fourth officer checked “knee strike.”
And yet, the DOJ observed, nowhere in their TRRs did the officers indicate “how many strikes they delivered, where they landed, or why each was necessary.” The officers admitted the man had been injured, but they offered no account of exactly how or why. “In the man’s booking photo, he has abrasions on his face,” the DOJ laconically concluded. In such incidents, it is clear, these reports function as a kind of sanitizing fig leaf over raw violence. They’re judiciously employed bits of verbal chaff—in the same register as the familiar yelled cop command to “stop resisting,” which usually comes at the very moment that the cop in question is striking a suspect who is long past the point of being able to do much but sag to the ground and curl up in a fetal position.
There are still other paradoxes. Police departments regularly pride themselves on professionalism, “community” relations, and general restraint. But their claims of prudence sit uneasily alongside the bald aggression of acronyms for task forces like TRASH (Total Resources Against South Bureau Hoodlums), a notorious outfit that the LAPD founded in 1973, and renamed to the slightly more palatable CRASH (substituting “community” for “total” and “street” for “South Bureau”), which operated until 2000; or BOSS (Bureau of Special Services), which the NYPD deployed against black radicals, among other groups, from the 1950s to the 1970s. In L.A., SWAT, perhaps the most celebrated cop acronym of all, did not start out as “Special Weapons and Tactics,” but rather as “Special Weapons Attack Teams,” a phrase dreamed up by the LAPD’s Daryl F. Gates, who in his memoirs says being forced to modify the name by PR-conscious superiors made him feel “crestfallen.” But that was the late 1960s—today, with police militarized like never before, and Punisher skulls plastered on more than a few patrol cars nationwide, the original name might be welcomed.
Coptalk, in any case, is defined by one paradox above all: a total monopoly on deciding what counts as rationality, alongside the police’s conversation-ending deference to their own invocations of that most irrational of affects, fear. The scholar and theorist Rei Terada, writing of the distressing regularity with which police shoot the mentally ill (or as they’ve been known in coptalk, “emotionally disturbed persons,” or EDPs), notes, “From the perspective of the police, resisting arrest is necessarily irrational: they perceive irrational people as resisters, even if that isn’t their intention, and resisters as definitionally crazed.” Drawing a gun, shining a flashlight, and yelling at anyone will understandably terrify that person; for a child, or for someone who is intoxicated or suffering mental health issues, this effect is even more likely. Yet if you hesitate too long or move the wrong way, if you make a gesture that could possibly be conceived as threatening, within seconds, the police can end you. To be in fear for their lives is the police’s criterion for deploying deadly force, while your own terror can be precisely what cops cite as proof that they had no choice but to kill you. “That’s what the higher-ups tell officers to say when something goes awry,” observed Matthew Horace, a distinguished police veteran of both state and federal law enforcement. “You learn it in the police academy and it becomes the mantra of every officer when any shootings occur. And who can prove that you weren’t in fear for your life, even if the fear was caused by something improper that you yourself did.”


newrepublic--2020-03-31--Welcome to the Zoom Party

Welcome to the Zoom Party

In 2011 , a New York Times piece announced the rise of videoconferencing .
Skype had been around since 2003 , but Microsoft had just bought the company , and a “ critical mass ” of businesses was starting to host meetings virtually .
The article quoted a psychiatrist named Thomas Lewis warning of our oncoming isolation : “ The more communications channels to the world in our living room , the less likely we are to leave the living room.
” It has turned out , of course , the other way around .
Against the dramatic backdrop of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ascendancy : the multiperson video chat .
Be it in Zoom or Houseparty or Google Hangout , on smartphone or laptop or tablet , the virtual social event has brought succor to a lot of lonely people .
Surprisingly , the very tools that endear videoconferencing to managers also make them work for parties .
As a friend pointed out to me , only one person can talk at a time on a video call , which tunes the conversational frequency to something closer to dinner party than bar-shouting .
Another friend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first time she had achieved full distraction from the pandemic since isolation began .
Yet another friend told me that she likes how “ you aren ’ t expected to be too involved.
” At the virtual dance party , for example , one of our number sat quietly , painting , while another secretly played solitaire .
This represents a marked reduction in the engagement level usually required to formally hang out with somebody , and perhaps that is progress of a kind .

But that was the past. In fact, as soon as I rescheduled a standing after-work drinks date into a virtual equivalent, it was the look of Zoom that won me over, the sheer abundance of it. You see all your friends stacked in a grid view, their faces piled in rows as if they all live in different parts of some kind of Richard Scarry apartment building. And you live there, too!
Hollywood Squares, 1978 (YouTube)
It all feels like an old game show, like Hollywood Squares. That nostalgic mist is only thickened by the inevitably poor images and sounds coming from some of these rectangles. Cutting across this woolly and sentimental aesthetic, however, is the satisfying element of enjoying or even discovering a truly futuristic experience. Back in 2011, the Times compared video chatting to jet packs, in terms of unimaginability: Look at us acting out that cyberspace fantasy now, as if inside the Tron mainframe.
That charm pulled me into the Zoom party harder than my self-consciousness pushed me away. There’s something cool about the montage effect of these multiple channels on a single screen, reminiscent of a 1970s action movie introducing its ass-kicking heroines. In cinema, this style is called “spatial montage” or “windowing.” In the language of Michel Betancourt, it’s a kind of split-screen editing defined by the “presentation of multiple images (shots) simultaneously on screen, all juxtaposed in a fashion that has direct parallels in both graphic design and comics.”


newrepublic--2020-03-30--This Is Crisis Colonization

This Is Crisis Colonization

On Saturday morning , as hundreds of tribes were mobilizing their emergency responses to the coronavirus , a shock wave reverberated through Indian Country : Mashpee Wampanoag Chairman Cedric Cromwell announced that Darryl LaCounte , the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians , had called him with the news that Mashpee land would be taken out of trust , effectively terminating the tribe ’ s legal claims to sovereign land .
Even against the backdrop of a pandemic , it can not be overstated how alarming this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ welcomed the violent Pilgrims onto their land , and they have been fighting for federal recognition , tribal sovereignty , and the return of their land for decades .
After finally obtaining federal recognition in 2007 , the Mashpee believed that sovereignty and land rights would soon follow , which seemed true when the Department of the Interior approved the tribe ’ s land-into-trust application in 2015 .
“ This road to establish sovereign territory in Mashpee and Taunton has been a long one , ” Cromwell said at the time .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But in a matter of five years , a lawsuit , a new president , and an archaic legal system would rob them of all of it .
The Mashpee decision being handed down by the White House as the entire nation remains singularly focused on staying alive was likely no accident .
America has often used emergencies to blanket its land theft .
A year into the Civil War , President Lincoln waged war on Dakota lands after the tribes revolted due to the federal government failing to uphold its treaty responsibilities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tribal nations .
In April 1863 , Congress passed the Dakota Removal Act , a law that legally removed and barred tribes from Minnesota and stands to this day .
As the war dragged on , the American government turned its eye to Diné lands in the Southwest , carrying out the forced removal and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo Nation .
The Interior ’ s most recent retraction is just a painful reminder of that history—and the fact that there is no such thing as a “ postcolonial ” society .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more sophisticated , but that ’ s about it .
The crisis currently faced by the Mashpee stems from the current administration and a 2008 Supreme Court decision .
In that case , Carcieri v. Salazar , the justices found , based on American laws drafted in the 1930s to legalize the forthcoming termination era , in which the federal government sought to dissolve tribal nations and assimilate Native citizens , the Interior can not take land into trust on behalf of tribal nations unless they were federally recognized in 1934 .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ six nations in Virginia that were federally recognized in 2018 , to pursue recognition and land by way of Congress .
The Virginia tribes were able to achieve this by relinquishing their ability to open and operate a casino on their returned lands .
The Mashpee have not agreed to such concessions and have planned to open a resort since gaining recognition .
Which is where the president comes in .

The crisis currently faced by the Mashpee stems from the current administration and a 2008 Supreme Court decision. In that case, Carcieri v. Salazar, the justices found, based on American laws drafted in the 1930s to legalize the forthcoming termination era, in which the federal government sought to dissolve tribal nations and assimilate Native citizens, the Interior cannot take land into trust on behalf of tribal nations unless they were federally recognized in 1934. This prompted some state-recognized tribes, like the six nations in Virginia that were federally recognized in 2018, to pursue recognition and land by way of Congress. The Virginia tribes were able to achieve this by relinquishing their ability to open and operate a casino on their returned lands. The Mashpee have not agreed to such concessions and have planned to open a resort since gaining recognition. Which is where the president comes in.
President Trump doesn’t give a shit about Indian Country, either now or throughout his life before the White House. In 1993, Trump—upset that one of his casinos was floundering—infamously railed against the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe in court, saying, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” Since assuming the presidency, his tone hasn’t much changed. Where President Obama fulfilled his promise to meet with tribal leaders every year, the Trump administration has felt no such compulsion to establish true government-to-government relationships. Trump’s Interior Department has sold off land to gas and oil companies and fought tribe-led efforts to protect sacred sites. From his first week in office, Trump has backed pipelines that cut through sovereign land. His administration underfunded its delayed response to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis. The list of bad faith and open malice is long here.


newrepublic--2020-03-30--The Backstreet Boys Can’t Help You

The Backstreet Boys Can’t Help You

In the United Kingdom , the government has pledged to cover 80 percent of the wages of workers left unemployed as the result of the coronavirus .
Ireland has enacted an emergency nationalization of its hospitals to meet public demand during the crisis .
On Sunday night in the United States , in the absence of a functioning social safety net or guaranteed health care , people got the “ Living Room Concert for America , ” hosted by Elton John and broadcast by iHeart Radio and Fox .
The event , meant to take the place of an iHeart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus and serve as a form of counterprogramming to a rising death toll , offered glimpses into celebrities ’ homes , effusive praise for first responders , and a parade of mansion-dwellers soliciting donations to the charities Feeding America and the First Responders Children ’ s Foundation .
A little patriotic pomp in the face of an existential crisis and a quintessentially American spectacle .
The hour-long program—which included at-home performances by Mariah Carey , Billie Eilish , Green Day ’ s Billie Joe Armstrong , and Camila Cabello , among others—tried to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disaster at hand and serving as an hour of escapism for the homebound , socially distanced American populace , and subsequently achieved neither .
Brief phone-camera dispatches from health care workers , police officers , and other frontline personnel were shuffled between musicians ’ couchside renditions of Top 40 hits and celebrity speeches on compassion and resilience , making the whole affair yet another inadvertent display of the ludicrous distance between the part of society that will face physical and financial disaster from the pandemic and the part that will probably be fine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Backstreet Boys performing their 20-year-old hit “ I Want It That Way ” in simultaneous isolation from their respective homes .
One ( Brian ) played air guitar in Louis Vuitton pajama bottoms next to a pinball machine ; another ( AJ ) moved from singing in front of a vast sneaker collection to posing before a grand piano under a framed plaque commemorating the group ’ s 3x platinum record sales .
Nick Carter lounged outdoors by his pool .
Shortly after that , Russell Wilson and Ciara appeared on screen to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sons tossed a football about .
“ We ’ re here making the best times that we can in this tough time that we ’ re all going through , ” Ciara stressed .
Elton John , who emceed the whole procession from a perch in front of an ornate glass chandelier , said at one point , “ I have to be quarantined in the only house I have ever been in without a piano , ” a slightly inopportune reminder that he owns multiple homes .
( He eventually did produce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Don ’ t Let the Sun Go Down on Me ” to close out the night . )
Other celebrities managed to dial in from more modest settings and issued praise and encouragement for the nation ’ s first responders , but even these seemed a little light in the face of unprecedented disaster .
“ I ’ d like to dedicate this song to all the people out there who are on the front lines , ” said Dave Grohl before launching into an unplugged “ My Hero.
” Actor Ken Jeong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Procter and Gamble was donating $ 500,000 to the two charities of the evening , an amount that Fox then pledged to match .
For a company whose revenue exceeded $ 2.7 billion in the third quarter of 2019 , half a million seemed a somewhat small contribution , particularly after weeks of dismissing the entire pandemic as an anti-Trump hoax .

In the United Kingdom, the government has pledged to cover 80 percent of the wages of workers left unemployed as the result of the coronavirus. Ireland has enacted an emergency nationalization of its hospitals to meet public demand during the crisis. On Sunday night in the United States, in the absence of a functioning social safety net or guaranteed health care, people got the “Living Room Concert for America,” hosted by Elton John and broadcast by iHeart Radio and Fox. The event, meant to take the place of an iHeart Radio awards ceremony postponed due to the coronavirus and serve as a form of counterprogramming to a rising death toll, offered glimpses into celebrities’ homes, effusive praise for first responders, and a parade of mansion-dwellers soliciting donations to the charities Feeding America and the First Responders Children’s Foundation. A little patriotic pomp in the face of an existential crisis and a quintessentially American spectacle.
The hour-long program—which included at-home performances by Mariah Carey, Billie Eilish, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, and Camila Cabello, among others—tried to modulate between solemnly addressing the public health disaster at hand and serving as an hour of escapism for the homebound, socially distanced American populace, and subsequently achieved neither. Brief phone-camera dispatches from health care workers, police officers, and other frontline personnel were shuffled between musicians’ couchside renditions of Top 40 hits and celebrity speeches on compassion and resilience, making the whole affair yet another inadvertent display of the ludicrous distance between the part of society that will face physical and financial disaster from the pandemic and the part that will probably be fine.


newrepublic--2020-03-30--A Tale of Two Stimulus Packages

A Tale of Two Stimulus Packages

As Congress rushed to pass a $ 2.2 trillion stimulus package last week , many in the press could only marvel .
Not only was the size of the bill itself unprecedented—dwarfing 2009 ’ s $ 831 billion stimulus to combat the Great Recession—the level of cooperation was , as well .
Prone to endless laments of the lack of comity in Congress , the D.C. press corps applauded the display of unity in Washington .
This “ kind of bipartisan agreement for any actual legislation , let alone something this massive and complicated , is unprecedented in modern Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Amber Phillips after the Senate voted 96–0 to approve the bill , which emerged , in The New York Times ’ Carl Hulse ’ s words , “ despite a toxic dynamic between the two parties.
” But the most remarkable aspect of the Coronavirus Aid , Relief , and Economic Security Act was the consensus on government spending on display .
The subject line of Thursday ’ s Politico ’ s Playbook PM newsletter : “ Congress learns to love spending again.
” Its authors noted that $ 2 trillion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like a drop in the bucket for a Washington that ’ s suddenly eager to approve gobs of new spending.
” The Washington Post ’ s Philip Rucker wondered how the Republican Party , which had spent the Obama years railing about the need to trim the deficit and the debt , had come to embrace big spending .
Trump , one White House aide told Rucker , “ doesn ’ t give a [ expletive ] ” about the national debt .
“ It ’ s all about the markets and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all about the jobs numbers.
” The Sunday shows featured only a couple of passing references to the deficit and the debt .
Maybe , as Richard Nixon supposedly told Milton Friedman in 1971 , we really are all Keynesians now—the media , at the very least , seems to think so .
But to imagine that there is a new bipartisan consensus on spending is remarkably naïve .
A look back at coverage of the Obama stimulus—which , it should be noted , followed eight years of tax cuts and trillions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bush—showcases how Republicans respond to big spending under Democratic presidents .
It also points to how a GOP Congress will respond to spending requests under a hypothetical Democratic presidency in 2021 .
If the mainstream media is smart , it will by then have learned the lessons of the 2020 stimulus .
But it isn ’ t , so it probably won ’ t .

Cable news, in particular, was fixated on partisan squabbles over the deficit. A Pew Research study published later that year found that cable was significantly more likely than other sources of news to cover the political response to the recession and far less likely to cover its impact on people. The fight over the stimulus was portrayed as one being waged in the trenches of public opinion, with the president making his case and Republicans making theirs.
Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly summed up the Republican narrative on his show in early February 2009. While acknowledging that a stimulus can be useful and necessary, he insisted he was opposed to this particular stimulus. Obama had allowed “Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew to hijack the situation.… The majority of Americans are now opposed to spending a trillion dollars on social engineering and other liberal causes.” Emphasizing the pork in the bill, Republican senators went on their own publicity blitz, with Mitch McConnell decrying “$150 million in honeybee insurance” as “nonsense” on Face the Nation. (It was actually a disaster relief insurance program for all livestock producers.)
As obviously silly and unprincipled as these objections were, they were nevertheless treated as sincere. Republicans really did want to trim spending and government waste, for the good of the country. It was only later that it was revealed that McConnell’s strategy was actually to undermine Obama at every turn, with unified and total Republican opposition, whatever it might cost voters. The difference between the GOP’s approach in 2009 and the Democrats’ approach in 2020 says everything you need to know about the two parties.


newrepublic--2020-03-30--Don’t Worry About Supermarket Shelves. Worry About Farmers.

For longtime central Michigan farmer Bob Thompson , the coronavirus comes at a particularly bad moment .
“ It has been a tumultuous period these four or five years in agriculture .
It has pushed many smaller farmers to the brink of bankruptcy , ” he told me .
“ I fear that it ’ s going to be considered the last nail in the coffin … it will be the straw that broke the camel ’ s back.
” The ongoing coronavirus epidemic has shifted American markets , changed typical spending patterns , and closed international borders .
While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a food shortage in the United States—despite the empty supermarket shelves—it is adding a lot of uncertainty to the food and farming industries and could tee up a long-term crisis down the line .
“ Clearly , not knowing is hard to take : not knowing whether or not you ’ re going to have a market for a crop and not knowing the extent of this virus and the resulting economic impact across the board , ” said Thomspon , who is head of the Michigan Farmers Union .
“ They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like uncertainty .
Farmers don ’ t like it , either.
” Like the seasons , the agriculture industry runs on a set schedule .
Crops are typically planted in the spring , picked in the summer , and then sold to distributors or local retailers , from which food eventually gets to your plate .
But signs are emerging that the coronavirus could cause a substantial disruption to this process , starting with getting crops out of the field .

International markets are yet another conundrum for the agriculture industry. Whether countries overseas reeling from the pandemic will still accept foreign goods remains a giant open question. That’s especially worrisome for the meat and poultry industry: In 2019, nearly 17 percent of all U.S. meat and poultry production was sold internationally, according to Department of Agriculture data. Mexico and Japan are the top export markets for the pork industry. Japan and South Korea are the top two international buyers of U.S. beef. According to Nepveux, 2020 is expected to be the U.S. meat industry’s biggest production year in history. But a lack of foreign sales could mean a surplus on the U.S. market and therefore falling commodity prices. “The biggest confusion is what happens when countries we’d export to or import to shut down inside for months at a time. Same across the U.S.,” said Nepveux, suggesting at least one quarter could experience a decline in trade due to a winnowing of consumer spending habits.
All of these unknown variables the coronavirus brings are yet another challenge for farmers who’ve already suffered from increasingly variable weather patterns, as well as the Trump administration’s trade wars. Thompson said the stress is getting to Michigan growers he knows, some of whom struggle with depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts. Pre-coronavirus, he was in the midst of organizing a monthly lunch for local growers, as a way to offer a friendly social setting for those whom he described as naturally socially distanced due to their work. That plan has been put on hold for the foreseeable future. “Now we can’t provide that human touch physically that some desperately need,” Thompson said.
Asked what the best-case scenario might be for farmers during the current pandemic, Thompson was at a loss. “The problem is you can’t go back in time, you have to go forward,” he said. “Farmers aren’t different from anyone else. We want to see a quick resolution, but that doesn’t appear on the horizon. It’s nice to be optimistic, but reality has to set in, too.”


The Caged Ballot

Then , as now , voting was at the heart of conservatives ’ fears .
The dynamic that today governs much of the battle over access to the ballot—that Republicans do better when turnout is lower , especially among minorities and other marginalized groups—was just becoming clear .
“ I don ’ t want everybody to vote , ” Paul Weyrich , the legendary conservative activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation , told a religious right gathering in Dallas during the 1980 campaign .
“ As a matter of fact , our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Two years later , a young John Roberts would send a memo to his boss at the Reagan Justice Department outlining a sophisticated legal strategy to dramatically narrow the scope of the Voting Rights Act .
Around the same time , a much cruder scheme landed Republicans in hot water .
In the lead-up to a 1981 race for governor of New Jersey , top RNC officials launched an effort they called the National Ballot Security Task Force .
According to a complaint later filed by Democrats in U.S. District Court , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lists to send letters to voters in minority-heavy districts .
The envelopes requested that undeliverable letters not be forwarded but instead returned to sender .
The task force got back more than 45,000 letters—about 4 percent of the state ’ s total nonwhite population at the time .
Then , less than two weeks before the election , they went to election officials throughout New Jersey and urged them to purge these voters from the rolls—a voter suppression tactic known as “ caging.
” When the election officials investigated , they found that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ registration lists —and that , indeed , most of the voters under challenge by the RNC either had already been removed from the voting rolls or had transferred their registration to a new address .
The Republicans were undaunted .
In a transparent effort to spread fear about voting , RNC officials announced to the media about a week before the election that they planned to challenge ballots cast by these voters .
Then , according to the complaint , the task force , working with local police agencies , hired deputy sheriffs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Election Day in urban neighborhoods with large minority populations .
These self-styled poll watchers were armed with revolvers ; they also sported two-way radios and armbands reading “ National Ballot Security Task Force ” ( even though no such organization existed as anything other than a voter-intimidation arm of the RNC ) .
The task force ’ s director , a Washington-based RNC employee , was made a deputy sheriff as part of the scheme .
Once the poll monitors had set up shop , they soon began , in the language @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operations of polling places , harassing poll workers , stopping and questioning prospective voters , refusing to permit prospective voters to enter the polling places , ripping down signs of one of the candidates , and forcibly restraining poll workers from assisting , as permitted by state laws , voters to cast their ballots.
” They also hung posters in and around polling places that read , in bright red ink : “ Warning : This Area Is Being Patrolled by the National Ballot Security Task Force : It Is a Crime to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Laws.
” The posters offered a $ 1,000 reward for any information about illegal voting .
Nowhere did they say that they had been paid for by the GOP , as federal election law required .

It’s not that Republicans will have a totally free hand, of course—blatant voter intimidation, as well as racial discrimination in voting, are still illegal. But Clark told his audience that the lifting of the decree would allow the RNC to coordinate all its Election Day activities with the Trump campaign, state parties, and the House and Senate Republican campaign arms. Clark went on to describe a multimillion-dollar RNC-funded effort to flood the polls and courthouses with Republican activists and lawyers this November. The initiative, he promised, would represent “a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, and a much better funded program” than any similar GOP effort in other recent presidential cycles. He added: “This is all a result of us being able to budget and coordinate directly with the RNC.” Some swing-state Republicans may already be taking advantage of the change. Florida’s GOP-led legislature is advancing a bill to allow Election Day poll watchers to monitor any precinct in the state; currently, they have to live in the precincts they surveil.
And of course, the newly unleashed RNC won’t be working alongside an ordinary GOP standard-bearer. Instead, it will team up with a candidate who, ahead of his 2016 election and throughout his first term in office, has led an unprecedented and unhinged crusade against alleged election fraud, and has repeatedly urged his backers to act as a vigilante-style anti–voter-fraud police force. Now, in his remarks before the RNLA, Clark was making it clear that, without the consent decree in force any longer, Trump’s paranoid obsession with thwarting the workings of democracy can form a critical component of the GOP’s 2020 electoral playbook.
“Every time we’re in with [Trump], he asks, ‘What are we doing about voter fraud? What are we doing about voter fraud?’” Clark told the lawyers. “Which is great for a guy who’s looking for budget approval on stuff, because I can say, ‘Hey, the president really wants it.’ But the point is, he’s committed to this, he believes in it, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it’s successful.”


Rent Strike Nation

Last week , the head of the St. Louis Federal Reserve , James Bullard , predicted that in the second quarter of 2020 , the U.S. economy could see a 30 percent unemployment rate and a 50 percent drop in gross domestic product .
Both of these numbers far surpass their respective equivalencies during the Great Depression , with the slash in GDP dwarfing the downturn of the 2008 crash by factors of 10 .
“ This is a planned , organized partial shutdown of the U.S. economy in the second quarter , ” Bullard said during the press call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is a huge shock , and we are trying to cope with it and keep it under control.
” As most workers in this country live paycheck to paycheck—some surveys place that number at half of the workforce , others reach closer to 80 percent—Bullard ’ s predictions point to an economic disaster that will likely hit people hardest in the area that consumes the majority of their paychecks : housing .
Millions of new unemployment filings have surfaced in the last week , with several states ’ unemployment and Medicare websites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Even with some supports from the stimulus bill , renters are still scrambling to come up with rent money on April 1 .
A $ 1,200 government check doesn ’ t mean much when it barely covers a month ’ s rent in many cities .
Across the country , rents have soared as real wages remain stagnant .
Nearly half of New York City households are considered rent-burdened , which means they pay more than 30 percent of their income just to keep a roof over their heads .
In Oakland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in recent years , a group of lifelong residents moved into a long-vacant house in protest of the lack of affordable housing .
In the wake of the pandemic in Los Angeles , where minimum-wage workers need to pull nearly 80-hour shifts just to reach the “ rent-burdened ” threshold , unhoused families reclaimed 13 vacant homes , both as protest and a means of survival .
As The New Republic reported last summer , even in America ’ s most affluent cities , low-income families fall through the cracks in a system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ document the rapid spread of housing insecurity .
In response to a crisis further inflamed by the coronavirus , existing housing rights organizations have been struggling to meet new calls for organizing and resources , many of which have coalesced around a radical demand : A nationwide rent strike .

Last week, the head of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, James Bullard, predicted that in the second quarter of 2020, the U.S. economy could see a 30 percent unemployment rate and a 50 percent drop in gross domestic product. Both of these numbers far surpass their respective equivalencies during the Great Depression, with the slash in GDP dwarfing the downturn of the 2008 crash by factors of 10. “This is a planned, organized partial shutdown of the U.S. economy in the second quarter,” Bullard said during the press call, voice quiet and flat. “It is a huge shock, and we are trying to cope with it and keep it under control.”
As most workers in this country live paycheck to paycheck—some surveys place that number at half of the workforce, others reach closer to 80 percent—Bullard’s predictions point to an economic disaster that will likely hit people hardest in the area that consumes the majority of their paychecks: housing. Millions of new unemployment filings have surfaced in the last week, with several states’ unemployment and Medicare websites crashing due to the rise in applicants. Even with some supports from the stimulus bill, renters are still scrambling to come up with rent money on April 1. A $1,200 government check doesn’t mean much when it barely covers a month’s rent in many cities.


newrepublic--2020-03-28--The Bonkers Appeal of Tiger King

The Bonkers Appeal of Tiger King

There ’ s Dr. Bhagavan “ Doc ” Antle , a repulsive doctor of “ mystical science ” who provided the animals for Ace Ventura and Doctor Doolittle .
He rides an elephant named Bubbles around his private zoo , and we see him clutch a tiger in his arms as he zooms down a waterslide .
The zoo is staffed by young female “ apprentices ” who work seven days a week .
A former employee recalls living on the property in a cockroach-strewn horse stall and allowing Antle to arrange for her to get breast implants so that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sleep .
She says Antle prefers virgins , because then he can initiate a sexual bond that keeps them on his compound as cheap , 24/7 labor .
Antle is a big fan of the Hindu concept of Shaktipat , meaning the transmission of wisdom from one person to the other , except that he exclusively conducts it through touch : “ Shaktipat of the penis , ” the former employee calls it .
Then there ’ s Jeff Lowe , a man who also maintains multiple relationships and is in the habit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with tiger kittens .
In the final episode , we see him sitting next to his pregnant wife , Lauren , explaining that next week she will give birth : “ Then we get Lauren back in the gym.
” Lowe eventually goes into business with another big cat enthusiast , Tim Stark , who admires Doc Antle ’ s style of zookeeping : “ How the fuck do you got these women trained ?
” he marvels .
Tiger King turns out not to be about big cats themselves but about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enhance their charisma , trick vulnerable young people into working for free , and generally treat them as extensions of themselves .
Though there are ( many ) joyful and funny moments in Tiger King , watching that dynamic play out over and over again is nauseating .
Several crocodiles and a handsome young man die as a result of Joe Exotic ’ s behavior .
All of them are innocent .
Director Eric Goode ( once profiled by the New Yorker for his reptile obsession ) explains in the first episode that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Floridian snake dealer , whom he discovered was keeping a snow leopard in the back of a van in 100-degree heat .
That sent him on a journey “ to investigate what people are doing keeping big cats in this country.
” ( She doesn ’ t appear in the show , but Tiger King was co-written and co-directed by Rebecca Chaiklin . )

Dr. Bhagavan “Doc” Antle in The Tiger King (Courtesy of Netflix)
There’s Dr. Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, a repulsive doctor of “mystical science” who provided the animals for Ace Ventura and Doctor Doolittle. He rides an elephant named Bubbles around his private zoo, and we see him clutch a tiger in his arms as he zooms down a waterslide. The zoo is staffed by young female “apprentices” who work seven days a week. A former employee recalls living on the property in a cockroach-strewn horse stall and allowing Antle to arrange for her to get breast implants so that she could get a few days’ sleep. She says Antle prefers virgins, because then he can initiate a sexual bond that keeps them on his compound as cheap, 24/7 labor. Antle is a big fan of the Hindu concept of Shaktipat, meaning the transmission of wisdom from one person to the other, except that he exclusively conducts it through touch: “Shaktipat of the penis,” the former employee calls it.
Then there’s Jeff Lowe, a man who also maintains multiple relationships and is in the habit of luring women into his hotel suites with tiger kittens. In the final episode, we see him sitting next to his pregnant wife, Lauren, explaining that next week she will give birth: “Then we get Lauren back in the gym.” Lowe eventually goes into business with another big cat enthusiast, Tim Stark, who admires Doc Antle’s style of zookeeping: “How the fuck do you got these women trained?” he marvels.
Tiger King turns out not to be about big cats themselves but about the way that controlling men use them to enhance their charisma, trick vulnerable young people into working for free, and generally treat them as extensions of themselves. Though there are (many) joyful and funny moments in Tiger King, watching that dynamic play out over and over again is nauseating. Several crocodiles and a handsome young man die as a result of Joe Exotic’s behavior. All of them are innocent.


newrepublic--2020-03-27--Darling, Let’s Do Coronavirus in the Hamptons This Year

Goldman Sachs co-head of investment banking Gregg Lemkau wants to disabuse you of any notion that working from his summer home in Hawaii is all it ’ s cracked up to be .
Lemkau complained on Twitter this week that the sun doesn ’ t come up for several hours into his workday .
He ’ s one of many people eschewing New York City for second , third , or fourth homes in places with lower infection rates , from the Hamptons to Hawaii .
Contractors servicing ski and summer homes in Maine are scurrying to get houses ready @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year and avoiding routine maintenance visits for fear of what germs their wealthy clientele might be harboring .
“ I ’ m not going into a unit for somebody that came here from New York City to expose myself to the coronavirus , ” plumber John Maynard told the Lewiston Sun Journal .
“ That ’ s why they came here , to get away from it .
I don ’ t know if they were exposed or not.
” Tourist destinations are urging those who might want to ride out their quarantines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stay home ; they fear wealthy and potentially Covid-19-riddled visitors overrunning already taxed local hospitals .
It ’ s long been assumed that during a nuclear war , the ravages of climate change , or an asteroid strike , the wealthy would be able to ride out rising floods and soaring temperatures in private bunkers , exclusive floating cities , or colonies on Mars .
As this pandemic is showing , though , the lifestyles of the rich and famous can ’ t exist without the small armies of workers who shop for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their children , walk their dogs , cook their food , teach their children , and treat their ailments .
The coronavirus may not be the great equalizer between rich and poor , as Madonna opined from a bathtub this week .
But it ’ s forcing the former to reckon with the fact that we ’ re all connected , whether we like it or not .
Atlas , it turns out , can ’ t really shrug .
Whether in a pandemic or a climate crisis , capital can only escape @ @ @ @ @ @ @ higher ground .
The relationship between the two is close and fraught : This week , stocks rallied even after news that 3.3 million people had filed unemployment claims last week .
News of the stimulus was partly responsible for that , but it ’ s also true that figures that translate to economic ruin and insecurity for millions can be great news for corporate America .
Low unemployment before this most recent downturn created what ’ s known as a tight labor market , where companies are more likely to have to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through higher wages and better working conditions .
Three million unemployment claims—for Wall Street—means people will be willing to work for less .
Scandalized by the stimulus bill ’ s provision to give those out of work an extra $ 600 a month on top of regular unemployment payments , The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote this week that “ workers will now make at least $ 15 an hour ( assuming a 40-hour workweek ) and as much as $ 35 an hour in places like Massachusetts—for not working.
” Who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a job in a Walmart or Amazon fulfillment center in such conditions ?
In a time of pandemic—when going to work can be a death sentence either for oneself , a loved one , or a total stranger—it was a striking statement of priorities .
Normally , bosses prefer workers hungry , desperate , and obedient .
Amid an outbreak , perhaps they don ’ t mind if they ’ re dead , so long as there are a few more at the ready to replace them ?

Goldman Sachs co-head of investment banking Gregg Lemkau wants to disabuse you of any notion that working from his summer home in Hawaii is all it’s cracked up to be. Lemkau complained on Twitter this week that the sun doesn’t come up for several hours into his workday. He’s one of many people eschewing New York City for second, third, or fourth homes in places with lower infection rates, from the Hamptons to Hawaii. Contractors servicing ski and summer homes in Maine are scurrying to get houses ready that are usually empty this time of year and avoiding routine maintenance visits for fear of what germs their wealthy clientele might be harboring. “I’m not going into a unit for somebody that came here from New York City to expose myself to the coronavirus,” plumber John Maynard told the Lewiston Sun Journal. “That’s why they came here, to get away from it. I don’t know if they were exposed or not.” Tourist destinations are urging those who might want to ride out their quarantines in warmer and more scenic environs to stay home; they fear wealthy and potentially Covid-19-riddled visitors overrunning already taxed local hospitals.
It’s long been assumed that during a nuclear war, the ravages of climate change, or an asteroid strike, the wealthy would be able to ride out rising floods and soaring temperatures in private bunkers, exclusive floating cities, or colonies on Mars. As this pandemic is showing, though, the lifestyles of the rich and famous can’t exist without the small armies of workers who shop for and deliver to them, care for their children, walk their dogs, cook their food, teach their children, and treat their ailments. The coronavirus may not be the great equalizer between rich and poor, as Madonna opined from a bathtub this week. But it’s forcing the former to reckon with the fact that we’re all connected, whether we like it or not. Atlas, it turns out, can’t really shrug.


newrepublic--2020-03-27--Protecting Native Elders in a Pandemic

Protecting Native Elders in a Pandemic

As one of the four Native people with a vote in Congress , Haaland is acutely aware that the actions taken by the federal government will have a direct effect on the current generation of Native elders and their families .
Initially , the Native American Caucus , co-chaired by Haaland and Republican Tom Cole , requested $ 20 billion in overall Indian Country stimulus funding .
Haaland said the initial counter from the White House was $ 3 billion , and on Wednesday , the Senate ultimately landed on a proposal of $ 10 billion in total .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m disappointed , ” Haaland said , “ because I ’ m not surprised at all about it.
” This is its own kind of tradition : Scores of Americans , including many members of Congress , have little grasp on treaty responsibilities to tribes , let alone an understanding of tribal sovereignty .
It ’ s difficult , then , for these same people to suddenly concern themselves with Native citizens who lack running water or broadband in the middle of a pandemic , because they don ’ t track that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and institutional malice .
The cyclical , systemic failures like those Indian Country has suffered are hard routines to break , especially when there are only four Native members of Congress , two of them freshmen representatives .
“ We need to think about the drastic underfunding that tribes have suffered for decades , decades , and decades , ” Haaland told me .
“ And so when I think about what needs to happen , I think about why a lot of tribes are in the predicament they ’ re in right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. government hasn ’ t lived up to its trust responsibilities.
” The government response is predictably inadequate , but Haaland said she has seen tribal communities once again rise up to protect and provide for one another .
She told me about how her daughter , who lives in Brooklyn , delivers meals to older folks in her neighborhood .
She said that on her own morning runs in Albuquerque , she ’ s been helping folks who need it take out their trash cans .
Looking outside of the Haaland family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eyes started handing out free sanitizer and toilet paper to elders and others in need in Nebraska .
The Cherokee Nation set up a hotline to provide updates to its Cherokee-language speakers .
The Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians closed their convenience store and sent all the perishable foods to their elders .
During this stressful time , I find myself returning to an essay written last October by Indian Country Today editor Jourdan Bennett-Begaye , a Diné citizen .
In it , Bennett-Begaye writes about her grandmother and how much she now relishes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the phone or watch Wheel of Fortune together .
The details are mundane and lovely , an example of what our elders mean to us on a personal , everyday basis .
My grandfather , a Sappony man and World War II vet , is 93 years old .
A few years ago , I spent several months interviewing him and other older members of my tribe about what life was like before our people integrated into North Carolina and American society .
I wanted those stories on record , a testament @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic hit , I returned to them .
Hearing these stories and keeping them alive for future generations is all we can do ; it ’ s what we should do .
But they aren ’ t what I ’ ll miss most whenever he ’ s gone .
It ’ s the conversations in between .
When we ’ ve talked on the phone over the last two weeks , it ’ s been about N.C. State basketball games that ESPN is replaying , or updates on the black bear that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Mainly , it ’ s just reassuring to hear his voice on the other side of the line and to know he ’ s still there if I need him .
He ’ s a calming presence .
He ’ s a reminder of what our people can endure and what they can accomplish .
But mostly , he ’ s my grandad .
And more than almost anything in the world , I don ’ t want to lose him .

During this stressful time, I find myself returning to an essay written last October by Indian Country Today editor Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, a Diné citizen. In it, Bennett-Begaye writes about her grandmother and how much she now relishes the lost ability to just call her on the phone or watch Wheel of Fortune together. The details are mundane and lovely, an example of what our elders mean to us on a personal, everyday basis. My grandfather, a Sappony man and World War II vet, is 93 years old. A few years ago, I spent several months interviewing him and other older members of my tribe about what life was like before our people integrated into North Carolina and American society. I wanted those stories on record, a testament to our perseverance. And when the pandemic hit, I returned to them. Hearing these stories and keeping them alive for future generations is all we can do; it’s what we should do. But they aren’t what I’ll miss most whenever he’s gone. It’s the conversations in between. When we’ve talked on the phone over the last two weeks, it’s been about N.C. State basketball games that ESPN is replaying, or updates on the black bear that’s been making appearances on his farm. Mainly, it’s just reassuring to hear his voice on the other side of the line and to know he’s still there if I need him. He’s a calming presence. He’s a reminder of what our people can endure and what they can accomplish. But mostly, he’s my grandad. And more than almost anything in the world, I don’t want to lose him.
Survival is its own tradition among our communities, but it will be our elders who will again be forced to withstand the brunt of what this latest crisis has in store. It might be difficult for some people in Congress to trace the path from a random line item in a federal stimulus package all the way down to such a personal representation of what these dollars go to protect, but those are the stakes here. The numbers on the line mean more of the phone calls we make just to hear someone’s voice. They’re an investment in the day, somewhere down the line, when we’ll actually be able to see one another again. They are a future.


newrepublic--2020-03-27--Two Weeks in an Oligarchy

Two Weeks in an Oligarchy

Two Sundays ago , New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio , devoted YMCA member and erstwhile presidential hopeful , reluctantly closed the city ’ s public schools after pleas from multiple city officials and public health experts and the threat of a teacher sick-out .
Later that week , he waffled on whether to cancel the St. Patrick ’ s Day Parade and then on whether to close the city ’ s bars and restaurants .
On the latter , he was swiftly upstaged by his longtime rival , Governor Andrew Cuomo , who issued an order to close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prison labor to make hand sanitizer and resurfacing plans to cut Medicaid .
In the two weeks or so since the World Health Organization designated the coronavirus a pandemic , the disorder that ’ s ensued has exposed the frailty of American civic life and the vast gulf between the people who make or influence policy and those who just have to live with it .
The malfeasance of the ruling class has reached such a level of absurdity that it almost feels as if they ’ re trying to summon a mob @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hand-deliver the remaining Democratic primaries to the socialist candidate , who ’ s fallen behind in the delegate race ) .
This week a gaggle of bankers and other billionaires—including former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich—took up the call to send workers back into the pandemic in order to keep the economy ( and presumably their investments ) cranking along without further disruption .
“ We ’ ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens .
Some of them will get sick , some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know , ” Kovacevich said .
Other billionaires , including Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman , called for caution but somehow also managed to reap massive windfalls , even as the economy has collapsed .
Ackman , who begged Donald Trump last week to put the country on an “ extended spring break , ” ostensibly for the good of the public , has since made $ 2.6 billion , essentially by betting that the spring break would occur .
Jeff Bezos , who off-loaded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ February along with several other Amazon and Wall Street executives , avoided an estimated loss of around $ 317 million while a group of Amazon warehouse workers continues to rely on crowdsourced donations to stay afloat .
Elected officials appear perfectly happy to follow suit .
Last week , reports from ProPublica and elsewhere revealed that Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler had made particularly timely and profitable sales of stocks right before the market crashed—Burr after warning an exclusive gathering of elite constituents about the scope of the coming pandemic and Loeffler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus .
( Both have denied insider trading or other illegal activity ; both also seemingly downplayed the severity of the virus in public while scrambling to protect their money in private . )
This week , the party to which Burr and Loeffler belong tried desperately to scuttle a part of the stimulus bill that would have granted an extra $ 600 per week to laid-off workers because , a group of Republicans protested , total unemployment benefits after that additional relief would have been more than poverty-wage workers had earned on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make sure we ’ re helping people get back in the workforce , ” said Florida Senator Rick Scott , whose family ’ s net worth in 2018 was $ 255 million .

Elected officials appear perfectly happy to follow suit. Last week, reports from ProPublica and elsewhere revealed that Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler had made particularly timely and profitable sales of stocks right before the market crashed—Burr after warning an exclusive gathering of elite constituents about the scope of the coming pandemic and Loeffler after a private Senate briefing on the coronavirus. (Both have denied insider trading or other illegal activity; both also seemingly downplayed the severity of the virus in public while scrambling to protect their money in private.) This week, the party to which Burr and Loeffler belong tried desperately to scuttle a part of the stimulus bill that would have granted an extra $600 per week to laid-off workers because, a group of Republicans protested, total unemployment benefits after that additional relief would have been more than poverty-wage workers had earned on the job. “I want to make sure we’re helping people get back in the workforce,” said Florida Senator Rick Scott, whose family’s net worth in 2018 was $255 million.
Meanwhile, our electoral system, battered as it was before, is now effectively suspended in the ether. We’re in the middle of a primary that’s been described over and over as a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, yet states must now postpone elections, or worse, push ahead with holding primaries in the face of a public health crisis, as Florida, Arizona, and Illinois did on March 17 to predictable confusion, disarray, and low turnout. There are few indications that such conditions will improve in time for the November general election, let alone the rest of the primaries, and the stimulus package approved by the Senate this week contained only $400 million for election protections, or a fifth of the $2 billion recommended by voting rights researchers. On Thursday, election officials in Florida announced that two people who had worked the polls on primary day had tested positive for Covid-19. “We just don’t know, did they contract it after or before? That’s between them and their physician,” went one department spokesman’s helpful explanation of the situation.


newrepublic--2020-03-27--The Climate Crisis Will Be Just as Shockingly Abrupt

As governments around the globe debate how to respond both to the coronavirus itself and the economic chaos it has unleashed , a theme that ’ s come up over and over is how to prioritize what makes it into spending packages .
In the United States , right-left fault lines have emerged over the question of bailing out emissions-heavy industries versus a greener stimulus .
On Thursday , the Environmental Protection Agency announced a large-scale rollback of environmental regulations as a response to the pandemic—allowing many emitters to police themselves when it comes to pollution .
While some argue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be taken up by the pandemic instead , the two issues aren ’ t mutually exclusive , experts say .
In a warming climate , more diseases are likely to emerge and spread , making climate change action an important part of addressing future health crises .
Moreover , the perception that climate change isn ’ t as urgent as other crises may rely on misunderstandings about how climate-related changes will happen .
The rate isn ’ t constant : Instead , there ’ s reason to believe everything from Arctic melt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s known as “ tipping points , ” where small changes in nature shift into rapid and irreversible damage .
Greenland and Antarctica are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s , according to a new study in the journal Nature .
Between 1992 and 2017 , Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice .
This falls under the worst-case scenario projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , and the effects are already being felt in many parts of the world .
The IPCC predicts that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 400 million people around the globe could be at risk of coastal flooding every year from sea-level rise alone .
Ice sheets “ may already be in an irreversible retreat , ” going past their tipping point , Timothy M. Lenton , director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter , told me .
“ The more we warm things up , the faster the ice melts and the sea rises.
” Even if we take aggressive action to curb emissions and halt rapid change , he said , some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And once ice begins to melt , it ’ s hard to re-form it without another Ice Age .
Lenton recently sounded the alarm in Nature on how close we ’ re getting to altering the planet permanently—and how the timeline on saving lives on climate change may be tighter than many people realize .

Ice sheets “may already be in an irreversible retreat,” going past their tipping point, Timothy M. Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, told me. “The more we warm things up, the faster the ice melts and the sea rises.” Even if we take aggressive action to curb emissions and halt rapid change, he said, some of these effects are already locked in. And once ice begins to melt, it’s hard to re-form it without another Ice Age. Lenton recently sounded the alarm in Nature on how close we’re getting to altering the planet permanently—and how the timeline on saving lives on climate change may be tighter than many people realize.
What may seem like a manageable rate of deforestation could suddenly trigger a mass die-off.
Other tipping points include rain forest loss in places like the Amazon, monsoon shifts in Africa and Asia, changes to ocean circulation patterns, and coral reef die-offs. For example, the Amazon is, for now, a major source of carbon sequestration—it pulls carbon from the air and stores it in the soil. Burning or cutting down trees to convert the land into agricultural fields, which comes with its own emissions, can turn it from a carbon sink to a carbon emitter. What may seem like a manageable rate of deforestation could suddenly trigger a mass die-off within the rain forest’s ecosystem. The atmosphere above the rain forest has already become drier in the past 20 years, NASA has found, “increasing the demand for water and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to fires and drought.” With all of these changes, much of the Amazon could look more like a savannah in a few decades, another recent study concluded. Many ecosystems around the globe could be vulnerable to this kind of phenomenon, passing an invisible inflection point that suddenly and irreversibly accelerates the rate of change, as a system is thrown off balance.


newrepublic--2020-03-27--Why Politicians Can’t Stop Talking About “Folks”

Any recent history of “ folks ” in political discourse must begin with Barack Obama , who used the word more than twice as often as any other president , according to a BuzzFeed analysis .
When discussing his budget policy in 2012 , for example , the president spoke of “ folks in the top 1 or 2 percent , ” as well as “ folks who can least afford ” to pay new taxes .
Main Street , Wall Street—they are all just folks , in the end .
If Obama ’ s reliance on the word was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revealing one that highlights the kind of friendly consensus he believed could exist between the one percent and the rest of America .
“ Folks ” always seem to be working together in a spirit of unity , which is why it sounded so perverse when the president said , “ We tortured some folks , ” in a 2014 press conference about the Bush administration ’ s enhanced interrogation techniques .
He went on to warn his audience not to be too “ sanctimonious ” about the tough job that “ those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing in Iraq after September 11 .
In straining to put the Bush years behind him , Obama had conflated victims and perpetrators : They , too , were all just folks .
Politicians claiming Obama ’ s mantle as a consensus builder have inherited his devotion to the word .
Joe Biden regularly begins his sentences with it : As he told an audience in Philadelphia last year , “ Folks , I know some of the really smart folks say Democrats don ’ t want to hear about unity.
” See @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pointy-headed folks who don ’ t care about unity are still folks like Joe .
For Biden , and for generations of liberals before him , the term was a useful way to paper over the awkward class divisions that had prevented the United States from uniting around a shared political project .
In an 1842 short story , the social reformer Catharine Maria Sedgwick praised a poor Irish immigrant family that managed to keep a clean , decent house .
“ Everything had a becoming appearance , ” Sedgwick wrote , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived like folks.
” To be like folks , in this construction , was to live in a genteel , eminently respectable poverty .
The turn of phrase acknowledged class inequality , even as it suggested that good manners , hard work , and clean bedsheets could overcome it .

Any recent history of “folks” in political discourse must begin with Barack Obama, who used the word more than twice as often as any other president, according to a BuzzFeed analysis. When discussing his budget policy in 2012, for example, the president spoke of “folks in the top 1 or 2 percent,” as well as “folks who can least afford” to pay new taxes. Main Street, Wall Street—they are all just folks, in the end.
If Obama’s reliance on the word was a rhetorical tic, it was a revealing one that highlights the kind of friendly consensus he believed could exist between the one percent and the rest of America. “Folks” always seem to be working together in a spirit of unity, which is why it sounded so perverse when the president said, “We tortured some folks,” in a 2014 press conference about the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques. He went on to warn his audience not to be too “sanctimonious” about the tough job that “those folks”—the CIA interrogators, now—were doing in Iraq after September 11. In straining to put the Bush years behind him, Obama had conflated victims and perpetrators: They, too, were all just folks.


newrepublic--2020-03-26--The Deranged Push to Get Americans Back to Work

And , as if to prove the intellectual fragility of the right ’ s rising anti-laissez-faire traditionalists , First Things ’ Rusty Reno , a putatively heterodox conservative , offered an impressively grotesque illustration of the same old fusion between pseudo-piety and market ideology that has always defined the movement ’ s mainstream .
“ The mass shutdown of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse , even demonic atmosphere , ” he wrote .
“ Governor Cuomo and other officials insist that death ’ s power must rule our actions .
Religious leaders have accepted this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gospel and the distribution of the Bread of Life .
They signal by their actions that they , too , accept death ’ s dominion.
” The reality all this grandstanding evades is that there is , again , no real trade-off here .
There will be socioeconomic devastation as a consequence of state lockdowns , and there would be deeper socioeconomic devastation as a consequence of the virus ’ s poorly contained spread , which would destroy our health care infrastructure and kill American civilians in extraordinary numbers .
But this posturing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The people we hear as raving imbeciles are , for conservative audiences , daring provocateurs broaching hard questions the left is too timid , frail , and sentimental to touch .
Of course , the right can deploy discourse-smothering emotion when it wants to .
These are many of the same people who have spent nearly 20 years accusing anybody condemning American imperialism , jingoism , and Islamophobia of dishonoring or forgetting the nearly 3,000 Americans murdered on September 11 .
They ’ ve turned now not only to minimizing a national tragedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ died that day , even as we ’ re watching it unfold , but insisting that others undertake a conscious act of mass human sacrifice—an unfathomable letting of American blood—in the service of market and social forces that they do not even understand .
The one true thing they managed to grasp in the aftermath of that attack , and that evidently escapes them now as they babble about the flu and car accidents , is that the psychic weight and material consequences of a shock to the system are far more difficult @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequences of casualties our systems regularly and gradually absorb .
What is taking place right now will add to the number of preventable deaths we already tally annually .
We will not be getting the coronavirus instead of the flu , or car accidents , or heart attacks , or cancer , this year .
We will be getting all of them .
And , critically , patients with the virus are on pace to take up all of the available hospital beds in regions across the country .
The threat facing us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ended its in-studio guest bookings , even as those guests , comfortably ensconced in their own homes , rant and rave about overreaction and the urgent need to send people back into their workplaces .
But if all America opened up again tomorrow , it would not be Glenn Beck , the Fox pundits , or the staff of the Federalist who would man our cash registers , restock our retail shelves , or wash the dishes and clean the hotel linens of the defiantly infectious .
These are men patting themselves on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laboring in a totally marginal sector of the American economy .
To them , the people performing the labor that actually keeps the country running are merely raw materials—less human beings than replaceable fitted parts for the engines of wealth creation .

And, as if to prove the intellectual fragility of the right’s rising anti-laissez-faire traditionalists, First Things’ Rusty Reno, a putatively heterodox conservative, offered an impressively grotesque illustration of the same old fusion between pseudo-piety and market ideology that has always defined the movement’s mainstream. “The mass shutdown of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse, even demonic atmosphere,” he wrote. “Governor Cuomo and other officials insist that death’s power must rule our actions. Religious leaders have accepted this decree, suspending the proclamation of the gospel and the distribution of the Bread of Life. They signal by their actions that they, too, accept death’s dominion.”
The reality all this grandstanding evades is that there is, again, no real trade-off here.
The reality all this grandstanding evades is that there is, again, no real trade-off here. There will be socioeconomic devastation as a consequence of state lockdowns, and there would be deeper socioeconomic devastation as a consequence of the virus’s poorly contained spread, which would destroy our health care infrastructure and kill American civilians in extraordinary numbers. But this posturing is second nature on the right: The people we hear as raving imbeciles are, for conservative audiences, daring provocateurs broaching hard questions the left is too timid, frail, and sentimental to touch. Of course, the right can deploy discourse-smothering emotion when it wants to. These are many of the same people who have spent nearly 20 years accusing anybody condemning American imperialism, jingoism, and Islamophobia of dishonoring or forgetting the nearly 3,000 Americans murdered on September 11. They’ve turned now not only to minimizing a national tragedy that will kill many more Americans than died that day, even as we’re watching it unfold, but insisting that others undertake a conscious act of mass human sacrifice—an unfathomable letting of American blood—in the service of market and social forces that they do not even understand.
The one true thing they managed to grasp in the aftermath of that attack, and that evidently escapes them now as they babble about the flu and car accidents, is that the psychic weight and material consequences of a shock to the system are far more difficult to contend with than the weight and consequences of casualties our systems regularly and gradually absorb. What is taking place right now will add to the number of preventable deaths we already tally annually. We will not be getting the coronavirus instead of the flu, or car accidents, or heart attacks, or cancer, this year. We will be getting all of them. And, critically, patients with the virus are on pace to take up all of the available hospital beds in regions across the country.


newrepublic--2020-03-26--The Other Latif and the Radiolab Problem

The Other Latif—a new serialized podcast and radio show by Latif Nasser , a producer at the WNYC subsidiary Radiolab—is about a case of overlapping identities .
After discovering that a detainee at Guantánamo Bay shares his name , Nasser ( who had at one time gone by Abdul Latif ) sets out to discover whether his Moroccan namesake , Abdul Latif Nasir , is a martyred innocent or a murderer .
According to the U.S. government , Nasir was captured with other fighters in Pakistan in 2001 .
Its intelligence said that he was an associate of Osama Bin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the mastermind bomber behind the destruction of the Buddhas of Banyam .
Shelby Sullivan Bennis , Nasir ’ s lawyer , asserts that her client is innocent .
Nasir has been tortured and detained without charges or trial , she says , for 18 years .
Early on , Nasser discovers that the government actually came to agree : Nasir was approved for release by the equivalent of a Guantánamo parole board right at the end of President Obama ’ s second term , in 2016 .
For some reason , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and then Donald Trump came into office , and the window of opportunity closed .
So , a second mystery twines around the first , since Nasser has no idea what Nasir did or did not confess during that parole board hearing , or why his release never happened .
Mistrusting the government ’ s heavily redacted record , Nasser decides to personally investigate the allegations that led the U.S. government to detain Abdul Latif Nasir , and why he has not yet been freed .
Nasser travels to Morocco to visit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pores over every bit of Wikileaked government paper he can find , and ultimately builds a detailed portrait of his subject .

The Other Latif—a new serialized podcast and radio show by Latif Nasser, a producer at the WNYC subsidiary Radiolab—is about a case of overlapping identities. After discovering that a detainee at Guantánamo Bay shares his name, Nasser (who had at one time gone by Abdul Latif) sets out to discover whether his Moroccan namesake, Abdul Latif Nasir, is a martyred innocent or a murderer.
According to the U.S. government, Nasir was captured with other fighters in Pakistan in 2001. Its intelligence said that he was an associate of Osama Bin Laden, a fighter at Tora Bora, and the mastermind bomber behind the destruction of the Buddhas of Banyam. Shelby Sullivan Bennis, Nasir’s lawyer, asserts that her client is innocent. Nasir has been tortured and detained without charges or trial, she says, for 18 years.


newrepublic--2020-03-26--America’s Eldercare System Is a Tinderbox

One of the earliest signs that the coronavirus was about to overtake the United States was the February outbreak at a nursing home facility outside of Seattle .
At the Life Care Center in Kirkland , Washington , the number of confirmed coronavirus cases climbed as family members anxiously waited at the windows , prohibited from going inside .
By the third week of March , after the coronavirus was officially designated a pandemic by the World Health Organization , two-thirds of the facility ’ s residents and 47 of its workers had contracted it , and 35 people in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 65 appear to be particularly vulnerable—and because their family members , paid caregivers , and other people who help care for them may now be required to distance from them—senior citizens have an immediate threat to contend with as the pandemic spreads .
But even prior to this public health emergency , the U.S. was on the brink of an eldercare crisis sparked by an “ elder boom ” —that is , the rapid increase in the population of elderly adults as members of the Baby Boom generation begin collectively to reach an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daily tasks .
As The Washington Post reported last year , “ Across the country , the number of seniors will grow by more than 40 million , approximately doubling between 2015 and 2050 , while the population older than 85 will come close to tripling.
” The problem isn ’ t , strictly speaking , the aging population itself but rather that the eldercare system as it stands won ’ t be able to match the surge , and , as pandemic conditions reveal , is already cracking .
Many seniors and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homes , in part because such facilities have a grim reputation in the U.S. , but also for the simple reason that they ’ re prohibitively expensive : In 2020 , the average cost of a private room at a nursing home was $ 8,365 per month .
Other eldercare options in the U.S.—which include adult day cares , paid in-home care , and unpaid care from family members or friends—together make up a fragmented and unreliable system .
It also increasingly relies on a low-wage home-care workforce that turns over quickly and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is one of the fastest-growing occupations and now employs around two million workers , that still won ’ t be enough to keep pace with the number of seniors who will require some form of in-home assistance over the next two decades or so .
According to one estimate by Paul Osterman , co-director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research and the author of Who Will Care for Us ?
, by 2040 there could be a shortage of at least 350,000 paid caregivers .
“ We know there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the demand , and we know we can ’ t keep workers because the jobs are so low quality , ” said Josephine Kalipeni , the director of policy partnerships for Caring Across Generations , which works to reform the country ’ s long-term care system through federal and state policy .
“ They ’ re not well-paying jobs , they ’ re not well-trained jobs , they don ’ t have many benefits .
We know that a ton of care workers are living on the margins of poverty .
”

It also increasingly relies on a low-wage home-care workforce that turns over quickly and burns out workers. While home care is one of the fastest-growing occupations and now employs around two million workers, that still won’t be enough to keep pace with the number of seniors who will require some form of in-home assistance over the next two decades or so. According to one estimate by Paul Osterman, co-director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research and the author of Who Will Care for Us?, by 2040 there could be a shortage of at least 350,000 paid caregivers. “We know there aren’t enough workers to meet the demand, and we know we can’t keep workers because the jobs are so low quality,” said Josephine Kalipeni, the director of policy partnerships for Caring Across Generations, which works to reform the country’s long-term care system through federal and state policy. “They’re not well-paying jobs, they’re not well-trained jobs, they don’t have many benefits. We know that a ton of care workers are living on the margins of poverty.”
As with many other low-wage occupations, home-care workers are disproportionately black and immigrant women—with many of the latter undocumented—and receive little in the way of training or employer benefits like health care or paid time off. They’re also excluded from a number of federal labor protections. According to PHI, a research organization focused on eldercare, today the median annual income of home-care workers is $15,100, or about $11 an hour, and 15 percent live below the federal poverty line. As the coronavirus continues to spread, many home-care workers who were already struggling to make ends meet are now confronted with the choice between following social-distancing orders and not getting paid or showing up to work and potentially putting themselves or their clients at risk. “Home-care workers are in a really challenging position right now,” Julie Kashen, a policy expert at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told The New Republic. “For them, going to work means caring for somebody who is potentially vulnerable to the coronavirus. These workers know they’re essential for that person’s care, but they’re also worried about their own health, they’re worried about the health of the person they’re working with and what they might expose them to, and they’re worried about coming home to their own families.”


newrepublic--2020-03-26--How Andrew Cuomo Became a Media Darling

How Andrew Cuomo Became a Media Darling

A consensus has started to emerge in the media : Cable news networks must stop airing the president ’ s daily coronavirus briefings in full , which are dense with dangerous quackery .
“ There is a very real possibility that in broadcasting these press conferences live or in quickly publishing and blasting out his words in mobile alerts , we are actively misinforming our audience , ” CNN ’ s Alex Koppelman wrote for the network ’ s Reliable Sources newsletter .
The Washington Post ’ s Margaret Sullivan argued , “ These White House sessions—ostensibly meant to give @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this frightening crisis—are in fact working against that end.
” Vox ’ s Matt Yglesias pleaded with networks to cut them off “ for the sake of public health , journalistic integrity , and the public ’ s basic mental health.
” In contrast , there has been little hand-wringing about cable news ’ s airing of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ’ s briefings , which have , Axios ’ s Mike Allen wrote on Wednesday , “ become a staple of midday cable news.
” If a media darling has emerged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Cuomo .
The governor , The New York Times ’ Ben Smith wrote , “ has emerged as the executive best suited for the coronavirus crisis.
” Carl Bernstein told CNN that Cuomo has demonstrated “ real leadership of the kind the president of the United States should have provided to the American people throughout this crisis , but hasn ’ t. ” Even those close to the president are taking notes : CNN ’ s Brian Stelter reported over the weekend that “ the White House has been watching Cuomo ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking cues from the New York governor.
” With Joe Biden on the sidelines , it is Cuomo who has acted as Trump ’ s foil during the ongoing crisis , as well as the de facto leader of the opposition .
But the ongoing love affair between the press and the New York governor reveals as much about what the media values in a leader as it does about Cuomo ’ s performance .
Cuomo is manifestly not the type of politician one would expect to play the role of comforter in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he governs by greasing the wheels and pulling the levers of power .
Despite being mentored by Bill Clinton , he does not feel your pain .
Despite being the son of Mario Cuomo , lofty rhetoric is not his thing .
He is a scowler and a schemer more in the model of Lyndon Johnson .
He is gruff and never seems to be having any fun .
His way of doing business gets things done—his backers would argue he has accomplished more than any other state-level politician over the past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the myriad compromises made along the way .

With a media obsessed with subtweets and clap backs of the president, Cuomo has a great deal to offer. One could read his daily press conferences as rebuttals of the president, who notoriously said he “takes no responsibility at all” for the government’s failures. He is the anti-Trump, even if his critiques are implicit rather than explicit. The fact that he has only criticized the president directly on a handful of occasions only bolsters his standing—proof that Cuomo is above politics in a moment of national crisis.
If the media treats politics as an etiquette class, Cuomo is the star pupil. The near-universal praise of Cuomo is best read as a finger-wagging message to the president: Be more like Andrew. Trump’s crimes against the aesthetics of governance, as well as the abstract principles of leadership that every news anchor inevitably writes a book about, regularly receive more attention than the horrors his administration has unleashed against the country’s most vulnerable people. The media’s coverage of the coronavirus is no different, with the president’s (admittedly disastrous) press conferences and tweets getting as much outrage as his administration’s myriad failures to prepare the country for an inevitable outbreak. In Cuomo, the bruiser striving to be a father figure, the press has found the perfect counterpoint.
Cuomo’s actual performance has been secondary to his press conferences. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom acted more quickly, shutting businesses down days before New York did. New York currently has 10 times as many cases as California. But Newsom’s briefings have not become the events that Cuomo’s have. Criticisms of Cuomo, particularly of his plan to make cuts to Medicaid in an effort to trim the state’s budget deficit, have failed to break through the rush to coronate him.


newrepublic--2020-03-26--An Emergency Decades in the Making

An Emergency Decades in the Making

How does an outbreak evolve into an epidemic and finally a pandemic ?
In Episode 4 of The Politics of Everything , hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss how the coronavirus crisis has been mishandled by the Trump administration , as well as the history of institutional and governmental response to public health crises .
Their guest , Laurie Garrett , is a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer and the author of The Coming Plague , a book about emerging diseases in the twentieth century .
The current fiasco may feel like it came out of nowhere , but it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy decisions .
“ You can ’ t do public health by privatizing it , ” Garrett points out .
“ The societies that have tried have seen it fail.
” Later in the episode , Walter Shapiro speculates about Biden ’ s choice of vice president .
Media hype notwithstanding , chances are the selection won ’ t be all that consequential—unless , that is , it ’ s a really bad one .
• “ There is perhaps only one competent and uncorrupted top-ranking official left in the federal government ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pareene warns .
• Among the multitude of horrors that will follow from the administration ’ s inadequate measures is the deepening of political divisions , writes Osita Nwanevu .
“ It is often said inspirationally that , for all of our seemingly intractable divisions , Americans come together in times of crisis .
This is false .
”

How does an outbreak evolve into an epidemic and finally a pandemic? In Episode 4 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss how the coronavirus crisis has been mishandled by the Trump administration, as well as the history of institutional and governmental response to public health crises. Their guest, Laurie Garrett, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer and the author of The Coming Plague, a book about emerging diseases in the twentieth century. The current fiasco may feel like it came out of nowhere, but it’s the result of countless concerted policy decisions. “You can’t do public health by privatizing it,” Garrett points out. “The societies that have tried have seen it fail.”
Later in the episode, Walter Shapiro speculates about Biden’s choice of vice president. Media hype notwithstanding, chances are the selection won’t be all that consequential—unless, that is, it’s a really bad one.