Category Archives: Politics

A Really Big Pile Indeed

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The (Roughly) Daily blog has a visual guide to wealth in America (thanks, Ted). The text, which takes a while to find, includes a few key facts:

We rarely see wealth inequality represented to scale. This is part of the reason Americans consistently under-estimate the relative wealth of the super rich.

Jeff (Bezos) is so wealthy, that it is quite literally unimaginable.

You can use your scroll bar to see why you can’t imagine it. But don’t stop until you get to the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, a sum that’s super-unimaginable.

Remember during the presidential campaign when Senators Warren and Sanders called for a wealth tax and at least one billionaire wept bitter tears?

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It looks like they’re still selling the mugs, although, given current circumstances, nobody knows when they’ll be delivered.

Note: I can’t vouch for the visual guide’s accuracy, but according to other sources, Bezos’s pile is around 1,500,000 times more — that’s 1.5 million times more — than the median net worth of a U.S. household, and 12,600,000 times more than the median for households under 35. That’s a really big pile.

A Terrible List of “Hot Spots”

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The New York Times has a long list of the worst virus outbreaks in the U.S. The list includes facilities with 50 or more cases.

Among facilities with more than 150 cases, jails and meatpacking plants predominate (presumably, the virus can survive longer where there’s meat). The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt and a few long-term care facilities, such as psychiatric hospitals, also have large numbers of cases.

Most long-term care facilities are relatively small and appear further down on the Times list. However:

Across the country, a pattern has played out with tragic consistency: Someone gets sick in a nursing home. Soon, several residents and employees have the coronavirus. The New York Times has identified more than 6,400 nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the United States with coronavirus cases. More than 100,000 residents and staff members at those facilities have contracted the virus, and more than 17,000 have died. That means more than a quarter of the deaths in the pandemic have been linked to long-term care facilities.

It’s hard to imagine the suffering that’s going on behind closed doors (including the doors of houses and apartments).

Marion Correctional Institution — Marion, Ohio 2268
Pickaway Correctional Institution — Scioto Township, Ohio 1655
Smithfield Foods pork processing facility — Sioux Falls, S.D. 1095
Trousdale Turner Correctional Center — Hartsville, Tenn. 1037
U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt — Guam 969
Cook County jail — Chicago, Ill. 940
Cummins Unit prison — Grady, Ark. 911
Lakeland Correctional Facility — Coldwater, Mich. 821
Bledsoe County Correctional Complex — Pikeville, Tenn. 585
Harris County jail — Houston, Texas 488
Neuse Correctional Institution — Goldsboro, N.C. 480
JBS USA meatpacking plant — Green Bay, Wis. 348
G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility — Jackson, Mich. 347
Lansing Correctional Facility — Lansing, Kan. 336
Triumph Foods meat processing facility — St. Joseph, Mo. 295
Butner Prison Complex — Butner, N.C. 266
Sterling Correctional Facility — Sterling, Colo. 260
Paramus Veterans Memorial Home — Paramus, N.J. 256
Trenton Psychiatric Hospital — Trenton, N.J. 247
JBS USA meatpacking plant — Greeley, Colo. 245
Parnall Correctional Facility — Jackson, Mich. 243
American Foods Group meat processing facility — Green Bay, Wis. 241
JBS USA meatpacking plant — Grand Island, Neb. 230
Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women — St. Gabriel, La. 216
Shelby County jail — Memphis, Tenn. 205
Westville Correctional Facility — Westville, Ind. 200
Stateville Correctional Center — Crest Hill, Ill. 196
Hackensack Meridian Health Nursing and Rehab Care Center — Hackensack, N.J. 190
Franklin Medical Center prison hospital — Columbus, Ohio 185
Christian Health Care Center — Wyckoff, N.J. 183
The Harborage nursing home — North Bergen, N.J. 181
Tyson Foods meatpacking plant — Waterloo, Iowa 180
Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center II — Andover, N.J. 176
Redwood Springs nursing home — Visalia, Calif. 174
Central Detention Facility — Washington, D.C. 172
Lincoln Park Care Center — Lincoln Park, N.J. 168
PruittHealth Palmyra nursing home — Albany, Ga. 167
Tyson Foods meatpacking plant — Columbus Junction, Iowa 166
Soldiers’ Home — Holyoke, Mass. 163
Gallatin Center for Rehabilitation and Healing — Gallatin, Tenn. 162
JBS Beef Plant — Cactus, Texas 159
Dillwyn Correctional Center — Dillwyn, Va. 158
Northern State Prison — Newark, N.J. 158
California Institution for Men — Chino, Calif. 154
Perdue Farms meat processing facility — Cromwell, Ky. 154
Brookdale Paramus assisted living facility — Paramus, N.J. 153
George Beto Unit prison — Tennessee Colony, Texas 153
JBS USA pork production facility — Worthington, Minn. 151

A president who was reluctant to force the production of protective gear was willing to force meatpacking plants to stay open. Why? On one side are giant corporations who want to continue business as usual and millions of voters who would be affected by a shortage. On the other is a low-paid workforce mostly made up of people — immigrants, Latinos and African Americans — who don’t matter to the president at all. Q.E.D.

A Non-Story That’s Now a Story

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The Guardian (formerly the Manchester Guardian) is a very good newspaper, even for American news. But even they sometimes make a mountain out of nonsense.

This was the top headline on their live Coronavirus blog a few minutes ago:

New York Sees Anti-Lockdown Rally as T—- Supports Michigan Protesters

The story says:

Anti-stay-at-home protesters have gathered in front of New York’s state capitol, where governor Andrew Cuomo just wrapped up his daily briefing on the state’s coronavirus response.

Then you see a picture of the demonstration:

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We had that many people show up for a pro-impeachment rally in our New Jersey town (population 22,000) on a cold, rainy night in January.

Some stories don’t deserve to be stories.

New Jersey’s Steps to Reopening

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Governor Murphy just presented the steps he thinks the Garden State needs to take before life can become more normal. Other states are doing the same thing. Murphy added that everything would be coordinated with neighboring states: “This isn’t just about NJ. Rushing ahead of our partners would risk returning our entire region back into lockdown mode”.

He didn’t announce a timeline:

Until we give the public confidence that they should not be fearful, we cannot take further steps. A plan that is needlessly rushed is a plan that will needlessly fail.

If businesses like restaurants, barber shops and theaters reopen, but their customers stay home, there won’t be any point to reopening.

The PowerPoint version:

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He skipped page 19 (is it a state secret?):

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We’ve Been Hoping for a Tipping Point

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Yet a tipping point, the last straw, will probably never arrive. A number of citizens of this formerly great country will spray disinfectant on their corn flakes before pouring the milk, but President Lysol will stumble and bumble on for nine more months. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see the word “resign” appear in a reputable publication, not the feverish musings of a humble blogger.

From Jack Holmes of Esquire:

Of course there are people who will defend him no matter what, but it’s hard not to think that the watching Elite Political Media’s refusal to say what is right in front of them has also aided and abetted the madness. Could he have made it this far without people who are so scared of being accused of Bias or not being Objective that they can’t bring themselves to call a loon a loon? The latest example comes via The New York Times…They did not feel they could just say this is dangerous, not to mention fucking crazy. … if a guy walked into the lobby of the New York Times building yelling at people to drink bleach, he would be removed from the premises in short order. But when the president does it, we’ve got to check in with the experts to know what an 11-year-old knows….

In fairness, [the] Times story was delivered with some trademark low-key Times humor. But we need to get a little more direct here. Something really has to give. At what point are you misleading your readers by not pointing out that what just happened was fucking crazy, and they’re not crazy to think so? There is a need among some, particularly in Washington, to believe the president is not completely batty. The prospect that he has no idea what he’s doing, and in fact may not be all there, is psychologically difficult for some to grapple with. It’s also scary for some folks to think about just saying what’s in front of them and feeling the backlash from his supporters. So evening-news programs and newspapers spend a lot of time cleaning up what the president says, pruning the overgrown hedges into something vaguely coherent in their reports.

…. When are we going to demand more than a circus from the people in whom we now have so much of our futures invested, willingly or not? We should be calling for this guy to resign on a daily basis. He should be impeached again for gross incompetence. Mike Pence looks like fucking FDR by comparison. Most of the president’s supporters will never hold him to any standard that he might not meet. In fact, they will continually lower the bar to accommodate him, because they have already invested too much of themselves in this to go back. The sunk cost is too high. It’s up to everyone else to plainly say that he should not have this job any longer. We hired him, on a temporary basis, to manage the Executive Branch of our government. He should be fired.

Unquote.

Note: A spokesman for the governor of Maryland says that after receiving more than 100 calls, the state issued a reminder that “under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through the injection, ingestion or any other route”. 

And just think, the 100 people who made those calls are some of the smarter ones.