#In a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Attorney General William Barr castigated prosecutors for behaving as "headhunters" in their pursuit of prominent targets, and for using the weight of the criminal justice system to launch what he said were "ill-conceived political probes." He described federal prosecutors as part of the "permanent bureaucracy," and suggested they need to be supervised by the president and Congress.
#Barr used federal statues to charge defendants in the unrest that roiled cities. In a recent action, Barr gave U.S. Attorney John Durham the authority of a special counsel under law, meaning that he cannot be easily fired as he refocuses on the actions of the FBI in reviving how the Russian probe started. Although Durham was heavily pressured to issue a report before the November 3 election, he apparently had nothing that might tarnish the reputation of Joe Biden.
#Eleni Schirmer, "Drowning in Debt," The Nation, November 30-December 7. 2020. - "During the past 30 years, per-pupil public funding for higher education had declined more that 30 percent. "Institutional debt at public colleges in the United States has more than doubled, jumping from $73 billion in 2003 to $151 billion in 2012. As schools borrow more, greater proportions of their budgets service the debt through interest and fee payments." "At its flagship campus, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, [where Eleni Schirmer is a graduate student] almost 3 percent of last year's budget went to servicing its debt. By comparison, the entire School of Education -- the ten departments that, among other duties, prepare future educators -- is allocated slightly more than 4 percent of the revenue budget."
#Emily Barone, "Rural U.S. hospitals are on life support," TIME, November 2-9, 2020. - In rural areas in the U.S., 15 hospitals have been shuttered as of about three months before this writing, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina (UNC), which is on pace to pass last year's record high of 18. "The hospitals in the worst financial shape generally have one thing in common: they serve the most vulnerable people, who rely on Medicare and Medicaid, or who are poor and uninsured."
" 'The secret to financial success is having privately insured people,' says Nancy Kane, adjunct professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health." "More than 20% of rural hospitals in the U.S. are at high risk of closing, according to a 2019 study from the consulting firm, Navigant, now a part of Guidehouse."
"One analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that rural hospital closures increase impatient mortality by 8.7% for time-sensitive conditions such as strokes, asthma, and heart attacks..."
#Abby Vesoulis, "Why are women being driven out of the U.S. workforce?" TIME, November 2-9, 2020. - Besides the report that 865,000 women have been driven from the workplace in August and September -- versus only 216,000 men -- "1 in 4 women are considering downshifting their careers, or leaving the workforce altogether, per an annual Women in the Workplace study published in September by McKensey & Case, and the advocacy group Lean In." "Domestic industries, including healthcare, food services and hospitality, have been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19-induced recession."
"Unlike most other industrialized nations, the U.S. doesn't guarantee paid parental or sick leave through permanent and universal federal laws." "The pandemic has unraveled years of advances in creating more equal workplaces."
#Elie Mystal, "The Real Trump Surge," The Nation, December 14-21, 2020. - "He (Trump) called it a hoax (it wasn't); he said it would magically go away (it didn't); he told people to inject bleach (don't); he mocked people for wearing masks (wear masks); he said only older people die from the virus and children are immune (none of that is true). Even after he got Covid and recovered -- thanks to the socialized medicine taxpayers provided him -- he refused to embrace basic science and reason; instead he ripped off his mask, parading about the White House balcony like some orange Ubermansch." "This is the real Trump surge: a surge not of mythical lost ballots but of flagrant, fast-replicating disease. Trump is a walking biological weapon."
"Trump's anti-science sociopathy has been embraced by many other political actors. His messaging, his attitude, his culture war-mongering has filtered down throughout our country, to our national shame." "There will be a vaccine for the coronavirus eventually, but there is no cure for what Trump has done to our society, inoculation from the disinformation he spreads and no way to bring back the lives he's already cost us."
#Tom Philpott, "Diet for Disaster," Mother Jones, January + February 2021. - "More than half of the calories Americans consume come from 'ultraprocessed' foods that are shot through with added sugar and fats, and are associated with weight gain. Pile those on top of our sedentary lifestyle, and the result is that almost 90 percent of adults have a metabolic dysfunction -- including high blood, cholesterol, or blood sugar -- and more than 40 percent are obese."
"In the first five months of the pandemic, the United States had a 39 percent higher mortality rate than Europe, where the obesity rate is half ours." "A 2017 study by Stanford [University] researchers found that even an incentive of 30 cents on the dollar to buy fresh produce would result in a 10 percent drop in Type 2 diabetes among kids and adults who receive SNAP benefits." "Obesity alone generates as much as $315 billion in health care costs annually, a large portion is picked up by public programs like Medicaid."
My Comment: The 90 and 40 percent percentages seem to be too high to me.
ADDENDUMS:
*Larry Deblings, a letter writer in the December 7, 2020 issue of the New Yorker, who writes: "I agree that Putin looks like a genius in the end. Trump has done more subversive damage to U.S. institutions, and to fundamental principles of democracy than any network of Russian agents could have achieved."
*Jane McAlevey, "Now the Real Work Begins," The Nation, November 30-December 7, 2020. - "That Trump got over 70 million votes means racism and misogamy are far too ingrained in the United States to give most caring people any lasting sense of deep satisfaction. The resentments he revealed and stoked with strategic brilliance and fury will take years to overcome."
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