Air Pollution, Terror Laws, Pretzeled Trump Supporters, Internet Reform, and Covid-19 Disparities

 #Brooke Jarvis, "The Air in Here," The New Yorker, January 25, 2021. - "The story is a reflection of the remarkable fact that in the twentieth century, an era of astounding medical breakthroughs, simple -- and relatively inexpensive -- public-health interventions saved more lives than clinical medicine did." "Our very breath ties us to one another and to the world around us."

"Lung cancer is by far the deadliest cancer in America, but other cancers receive significantly more funding." "Lung cancer, too, is becoming more common among non-smokers in the United States; someone is diagnosed every two and a half minutes. Worldwide respirator problems are the second most common cause of death, and the No. 1 killer of children under five." "We're still learning all that air pollution can do to our bodies. It can cause not just lung cancer and impaired lung development (in Los Angeles, researchers have found that they could trace the progress of anti-pollution measures by the increasing size of children's lungs)...."

#Moustafa Bayoumi, "No New Terror Laws," The Nation, 2.8-15.2021. "In other words, a terrorism double standard exists, one that is deeply entrenched in both our laws and our culture, that has given rise to the discourse we're now all familiar with: White-guy shooters get labeled as angry or desperate, while Muslim shooters ae defined as terrorists. The former are examined as troubled individuals; the latter no longer belong to humanity." "We should not enlarge the reach of the War on Terror to the point where we all, in one way or another, fall under its umbrella. We should instead be aiming to end it."

#Molly Ball, "Breaking Point," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "They [Republican supporters of Trump] pretzeled themselves to defend his shifting whims, reframed his outrages as silly showmanship, and rejected his first impeachment as partisan overreach. Absolute loyalty was what their voters demanded; any sign of deviation was swiftly punished." "And how can Republicans win elections if they are trapped between a fanatical base of delusional conspiracies, and a broader electorate that despises Trump?"

#W.J. Hennigan, Alice Park, and Jamie Ducharme, "Another Shot," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "Lack of federal leadership, first in coordinating distribution of the tests, and later in [failing to support] states to set up testing sites, led to limited access and critical delays in getting results." "Overall, the Office of OWS (Office of Warp Speed) has spent nearly $25 billion in federal money to more than 120 companies to develop, manufacture, and deliver vaccines across the nation."

#Bily Perrigo, "Building a better Internet," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "Under President Joe Biden, tech reform will take on a new, almost existential urgency for American democracy." "The unaccountable power of the tech platforms lies not just in the algorithms that dictate what posts we see, but also in how that translates to profits. As Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, and author of 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,' argues that the wealth of the Big Tech companies has come from extracting data about our behaviors, and using the insights from those data to manipulate us in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with democratic values." 

A key part of the EU's proposal to rein in large tech companies is to fine them up to 6% of their annual global revenues (several billions of dollars) if they don't open up their algorithms to public scrutiny, and act swiftly to counter societal harms stemming from their business worlds.

#Maria Jesus Mora, "By the Numbers," The Nation, 2.22-3.1.2021. 

50+% - Percentage of Latino immigrants in New York State who experienced Covid -19 symptoms and did not seek care due to fear or a lack of insurance. 

75% - Percentage of New York City frontline workers who are people of color.

14.4M - Number of people excluded from the CARES Act due to their own or a family member's undocumented status.

40.7% - Percentage by which Covid deaths would have fallen if the federal government had enacted a blanket moratorium on evictions from early March through November.

4% - Percentage of the white population in 14 states that received a Covid vaccine by the end of January, compared with 1.9 percent of Black people and 1.8 percent of Latinos.

43 - Number of states that don't release data on racial disparities in Covid testing.

A Focus on Violence and Fear of the Other

 #"Theunis Bates, Managing editor, "Elite's letters," found in TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "Up to 750,000 died during the fratricidal Civil War, and nearly 4,000 African Americans were lynched by white mobs in the Jim Crow South from 1877 to 1950. Today, violence remains a fact of American life. The U.S. has the highest rate of mass shootings in the Western world, and a gun homicide rate 25 times higher than those of similarly developed countries."

#"In September 2020, Adam Dean, a professor of political science at George Washington University, co-authored a study in "Health Affairs," showing that unionized nursing homes were associated with a 30% lower mortality rate at the height of the first coronavirus surge, compared with nursing homes without unions."

#In the wake of the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, a Washington Post/ABC poll among those who consider themselves to be Republicans, 33% said the Party should stop following Trump and take a new direction, and 12% said he should be criminally charged for his actions.

#Nancy Gibbs, "America's moral vacuum," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "The battle cries of Jan. 6 rhymed with America's insurrection past: the white supremacy, the bloodlust of mobs, the defense of indefensible means to achieve unworthy ends." "Maybe Jan. 6 was more a failure of moral imagination of grasping what people are capable of. And the failure reflects the collapse of moral leadership that we have seen in the past year, not just in our politics, but in what should have been the shared purpose of fighting a pandemic that threatened us all."

#Madeleine Albright, "Our destructive cycle of us-vs.-them thinking," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "The impulse to choose sides is inherent in our species. Psychologists point to our desire to be safe by joining groups with which we have affinity, our fear of the unknown, and our vanity: we want to think of ourselves as better or smarter than the other. These traits are ingrained." "Many of us would prefer to live in a country where there is no place for the rest of us, i.e. 'them.' Confronted with this reality, many citizens are tempted either to retreat more deeply into their respective group identities or to insist piously that such categories are irrelevant and should not matter."

#Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted on February 4, 2021: "The DC swamp and the fake news media are attacking me because I am not one of you. And they hate me for it." Sen. Mitch McConnell said of Greene: "Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancers of the Republican Party and this country." Yet half of the Republican Caucus gave Greene a standing ovation when she appeared before it to try to save her committee assignments.

#Ken Klippenstein, "Security Blanket," The Nation, 2.8-15.2021. "But despite this sprawling network -- by the DHS's own count, there are currently 79 fusion centers in operation -- DC's Capitol police claimed to have received no warnings about the Capitol riot." "Far from the lofty justification given for their existence -- securing the hundred and so-on -- the titles of the reports they've produced suggest a focus on criminal activity (supposed or otherwise) so mundane, at times comical. Perhaps most surprising is the astonishing umber of incidents labeled 'suicide by cop' -- cases in which a suicidal person attempts to provoke a deadly response from law enforcement."

#Kali Holloway, "Time for Accountability," The Nation, 2.8-15.2021. - "And the portrayal of Trump supporters as a monolith of uneducated, small-town rubes duped into 'voting against their own interests,' as the saying goes, is a classist projection of those who imagine that racism afflicts only poor whites. We knew even before the 2016 presidential election that the median household income for Trump supporters outpaced that of the average American home. That violent manifestation of white backlash has been threatening to consume the rest of us for years."

"The actions of the rioters belied the law-and-order rhetoric trumpeted by Trump supporters throughout his administration." "There are many more examples of heat-packing Trump supporters and other fascists menacing society, but suffice it to say that the normalization of right-wing violence demands that accountability for the Capitol rioters be a national priority."

Media Commentary on Trump and Enablers

The Trump Watch on Trump and His Enablers, Quoted Either in the January 22, or February 15-22 Issues of TIME Magazine, or Quoted Separately

#From Trump's Jan. 6 speech: "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country any more." 

#"Trump's congressional enablers are complicit in the deadly violence," said 'The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 'Senators Josh Howley, Ted Cruz, and other 'two-faced lying populist politicians' failed repeatedly to 'stand-up' and condemn Trump's dangerous rhetoric. Now they deserve to be cast into political purgatory."

#These same Republicans are suddenly calling for 'unity' and 'healing,' said 'The Washington Post.' "There is a minimum price for reconciliation: Issue an 'unequivocal acknowledgment' that there was no vote rigging, and that Joe Biden won 'fair and square.' "

#Paul Waldman wrote in 'The Washington Post': "Their rage will only increase. We may be facing an era in which 'right-wing domestic terrorism' is a regular feature in our politics."

#"The blame game runs far deeper that Trump," says Zach Beauchamp in 'Vox.com.' "The Capitol Hill mob was the logical culmination of years of mainstream Republican politics. For years, the GOP has vilified Democrats as extremists who represent 'an extensional threat' to Americans, and whose election victories are inherently fraudulent."

#Theunis Bates, the managing editor of 'Elite's Letter,' wrote: "Yet the people who stormed Congress weren't some alien other, but everyday Americans who -- fed a diet of conspiracy theories -- believed they were doing the patriotic thing."

#Kali Holloway, "The Failed Coup," The Nation, December 14-21, 2020. - "Bill Barr poked his partisan nose where no other outgoing attorney general had during an election, with a memo urging federal lawyers to look into Trump's groundless accusations." "Trump is still tweeting that mail-in voting is a 'sick joke,' and falsely insisting "I WON THE ELECTION!" 

"From the sidelines, he is cheering on street violence by MAGA thugs and branding political opponents as unAmerican." "After this year's presidential contest, 70 percent of Republican voters surveyed said it was not 'free and fair,' up from 35 percent before the election." "Now, Republicans are casting Black and Brown citizens as illegitimate voters to invalidate the Biden presidency." "Trump will keep denigrating  democracy to elevate himself. Yet again, this president's selfish gains will be America's losses."

#Luke Mogelson, "The Storm," The New Yorker, January 25, 2021. - "It was a peculiar mixture of emotion that had become familiar at pro-Trump rallies since he lost the election: half mutinous rage, half excitement at being licensed to act on it. The profanity signaled a final jettisoning of whatever residual deference to political norms that had survived the past four years."

"In the days before January 6th, calls for a 'real solution' became progressively louder. Trump, by both amplifying these voices and consolidating his control over the Republican Party, conferred extraordinary influence on the most deranged and hateful elements of the American right."

"Throughout the latter half of 2020, Trump had sought to dismiss the popular uprisings that Floyd's death had precipitated by ascribing them to antifa, which he vilified as a terrorist organization -- [yet, antifa is a relatively unorganized grouping of like-minded individuals.]"

"The Proud Boys had seized on Trump's conflation to recast their small-scale rivalry with anti-fascists in leftish strongholds like Berkeley and Portland as the front lines of a national culture war."

"Overnight, 'Stop the Steal!' gained more than three hundred and twenty thousand followers -- making it the fastest-growing group in Facebook history. The company quickly deleted it." "Even if it were possible to prove that the election was not stolen, it seems doubtful whether conservatives who already feel under attack could be convinced." 

"Many COVID-19 skeptics believe that lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccines, and contact tracing are laying the groundwork for the New World Order --" "While the religiously charged demonization of globalists dovetails with QAnon, religious maximization has also gone mainstream."

Senators Graham, Cruz, and Lee met with Trump lawyer, David Shoen, to go over the 'procedures' for Friday's meeting. Social media writers have raised conflict of interest charges. A public defender said she couldn't even use the bathroom with a juror.

Land Dispossession, 'Pickles,' and Trump/McConnell Give-and-Take

 Frencisco Centu, "Dispossession," The New Yorker, January 18, 2021. - "Like much of the American West, the Gadsden region bars unmistakable scars of our nation's drive for expansion and control." Simon Winchester's new book, 'Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World,' "offers us one case study after another of how the once seemingly inexhaustible surface of the Earth has devolved into a commodity, the ultimate object of contestation and control." Winchester "describes how the first conquistadores were emboldened by the fifteenth-century Doctrine of Discovery, in which the Pope affirmed their right to take possession of foreign lands inhabited by non-Christians." "Hugo Grotius and John Locke argued that unclaimed lands were free for the taking, and that it was a Christian duty to own and improve them."

"Early settlers readily concocted laws to authorize the extermination,  enslavement, and forcible relocation of one tribe after another. Expulsion and dispossession are, to be sure, a perennial tactic in the accumulation of land. Centuries before Britain began building its empire, powerful private and state interests set about appropriating land long held in common by English villagers through a variety of legal and parliamentary manuvers (sp?), in a process known as enclosure."

Winchester "reports that America's top hundred landowners now control an area as large as the state of Florida, and that their accumulation of property has increased by fifty per cent since 2007." Winchester writes that: "The houses that they had left behind had often been vandalized, and their possessions stolen; and in many a case the title to the land a Japanese family had somehow vanished, like a will-o'-the-wisp."

#Jane Mayer, "Cretin Hog," The New Yorker, January 18, 2021. - "At the age of forty, Pickles, whose real name is Piccioillo, is a bit old to call himself a 'boy.' But along with thousands of bearded and balding men in dad jeans, he headed to Washington to take part in what he called 'a kind of a last hurrah for Trump, who put so much on the line for us.' "

"Asked whether he was among those who rampaged through the Capitol, Pickles said: 'No comment.' Then he noted, 'I'd never been to the Capitol before - and I have now.' 'I know it looks hypocritical on our end, because of the whole B.L.M. thing,' Pickles said, referring to Trump's slurs against Black Lives Matter protesters. 'But if you seriously believe your country's getting take over by fraud, you're going to get nuts.' " (Pickles can be seen online wearing a shirt saying 'Kyle Rittenhouse Did Nothing Wrong,' about the subject in a double murder of B.L.M. protesters.) "

#Trump and McConnell Give and Take - Trump: "The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political 'leaders' like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm." "McConnell's dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insights, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse."

McConnell: "There is no question former President Trump bears moral responsibility . His supporters stormed the Capitol because of the unhinged falsehoods he shouted into the world's largest megaphone." "His behavior during and after the chaos was also unconscionable, from attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot to praising the criminals after it ended."

Trump: "Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our country."

#The Jurisdiction Question - Sen. McConnell had it both ways, because he delayed holding the trial until Trump left office, and then argued that Trump could not be convicted because he was not in office anymore. He suggested that the instant Trump ceased being the president, he exited the Senate's jurisdiction; however, the Senate voted twice that it had jurisdiction.

#Comedian Jimmy Kimmel gets the last word: "I think McConnell blew it. This was his party's best chance to make sure that Trump never ran again."

Tidbits From THE WEEK's Week

 The following items are taken from THE WEEK of January 22, 2021.

#Jonathan Last, in the 'Bulwark,' says: "Despite no evidence of significant fraud, about half the GOP's congressional delegation voted to overturn the presidential election --even after the sacking of the U.S. Capitol."

#"The GOP could really collapse," said Ross Douthat of The New York Times. "The implicit bargain of the Trump era required traditional Republicans to swallow a measure of insanity in exchange for a hold on power."

#"Trump should be criminally prosecuted?" questioned Randall Eliason of The Washington Post: "This  behavior seems to fall comfortably within the legal definition of several crimes, including 'rebellion and insurrection,' 'seditious conspiracy,' and 'incitement of a riot.' "

#David Yalle-Bellamy of Bloomberg.com says: "But a self-pardon has weak legal foundations that fly in the face of the Founders' intention to curb any official's 'absolute power'. In fact, a self-pardon might increase the chances that Trump is prosecuted.' "

#Greg Sargent of The Washington Post.com says: "Trump's presidency will soon be over, but the Capitol siege was 'a propaganda coup' that could energize far-right extremists for a long time to come. "

#Konstantin Kosacher of Roosiyskaye Gazeta (Russia), says: "Now U.S. voters are crying fraud and injustice, and besieging government buildings. Americans have 'tasted the fruits of good and evil,' and their virginity cannot be restored."

#The Times (U.K.) wrote: "It's not as if they were unaware of the dangers. Many Republican leaders loudly denounced Trump as a budding authoritarian during his 2016 run for office, only to go on to aid his campaign to overturn 2020s election results."

#"Viewpoint" by Timothy Snyder, historian in The New York Times, writes: "Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term 'fake news' echoed the Nazi smear (Logenpesse), 'lying press'; like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as 'enemies of the people.' " "Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. To believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else."

#David Frum, "The politics of perpetual victimhood," has this to say: "Since Barack Obama was elected president, a political philosophy that once emphasized personal responsibility has degenerated into a sour collection of grievances and delusional claims of persecution. But if the conservative world is to pull itself out of the moral wreck into which it has been led by Trump, its leaders will have to reckon with their descent into a politics of fear, resentment, and infamous deceit."

#"The pandemic windfall." "The fortunes of the 659 U.S. billionaires grew by more than $1 trillion, making the elite group's wealth double that of the bottom 50 percent of Americans -- 165 million people. Meanwhile, just 12 million jobs of the 22 million lost last spring have been recovered, and more than 400,000 small businesses have closed for good." 

"Tent encampments of homeless people dot cities across the U.S., and in the week before Thanksgiving,  26 million adults said their households were short on food."  

"About 84 percent of the stocks owned by U.S. households are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans."

#"United Kingdom: What has Brexit delivered?" (Dominic Grieve in 'Independent.co.uk') "While no new tariffs will be slapped on the $400 billion of goods we export annually to the Continent, our departure from the EU single market means the U.K. firms will now have to complete reams of customs paperwork, expected to cost some $10 billion a year." 

#Martin Vander Weyer in  'The Spectator': "The deal [with the EU] doesn't cover the service sector, which makes up 80 percent of our economy and 50 percent of our exports. Financial services firms' access to EU markets now depends on compliance with the different requirements of each member state."

#('The Guardian') "The legacy of Brexit could well be the disintegration at the cost of losing much of our country. That would be a terrible price to pay."

#"Pandemic vices: The battle against our new bad habits": "Chronic stress, such as that created by a pandemic, floods the brain with cortisol, hormones that inhibit functions of the prefrontal cortex -- the decision-making part of the brain that helps us resist the urge for immediate gratification." "Psychologists also say that  women are more likely than men to turn to alcohol when coping with issues." 

#"Bytes: What's new in tech." " 'More than 400 engineers and other workers at Google formed a union in January, following years of increased  employee activism,' said Kate Conger in The New York Times. 'It is a so-called minority union, representing a small fraction of Google's workforce, with the intention only to give structure and longevity to activism at Google.' "

#"Some day you may wish to return." "In 2018, Nigeria actually overtook India to become the world leader in desperately poor people, with 87 million people living on $1.90 a day, compared with India's 71 million."

#THE CLOSER: Akash Kapur, "Top of the World," The New Yorker, January 25, 2021. - "Many  millions of people now visit the Himalayan region in a typical year. Some four thousand climbers have attempted to summit Everest in each of the past four decades, a fifty percent increase over the period when [Jon] Krakauer wrote his book. Yet the mountains occupy one of the most politically fraught corners of the world, marked by contested borders and roads, and great power rivalries that are likely to shape international relations the rest of the century."

"According to a recent report, more than a third of Himalayan glaciers may melt by the end of the century, even assuming dramatic reductions in global carbon emissions."

 

 #Daniel Luban, The Nation, 2.8 - 15.2021. - "The 19th century economic order was overthrown not by mass movements or vanguardist parties, but by the modern corporation and the administrative state. 'The difference between a stabilized and regulated statism, and a mechanized and streamlined socialism is not very great,' [Werner] Sombart, [a German sociologist], wrote, 'for in both cases the entire economy rests on the basis of dependulization. Capitalism stems from the specifically hierarchical and individualistic nature of Western cultures, and these underlying traits are likely to persist well into the future. Likewise, the two specific cultural traits are the distinctively Western building blocks of capitalism -- hierarchy and individualism -- raise more questions than they answer. Aren't hierarchy and individualism parts of many different societies, not just Western ones? And couldn't individualism be more an effect of capitalism than the cause of it?"

"Certainly, it reflects a tendency to conceive of capitalism in terms of a set of discrete national economies rather than an inherently interlinked global system. For instance, one suggestive way of conceiving capitalism is in terms of 'market dependence,' the extent to which participation in markets becomes mandatory for survival. Imagine, for instance, a universal basic income program generous enough to ensure a reasonably comfortable standard of living. This guarantee of subsistence would remove the most important form of market dependence. At the very least, anti-capitalists should be prepared to answer the question of those who argue that 'the capitalist/socialist dichotomy is useless,' because it is 'political rather than analytical. In other words, there's no objective set of categories to tell us where one ends and the other begins.' "

#Bankaj Mishra, "Struggle Sessions," The New Yorker, February 1, 2021. - "Much murderous insanity erupted after 1966, but the Cultural Revolution's most iconic images remain those of the struggle sessions: Victims with bowed heads in dunce caps, the outlandish accusations against them scrawled on heavy signboards hanging from their necks."

"According to [Chinese journalist Jisheny] Yang, as many as a million and a half people were killed, thirty-six million persecuted, and a hundred million altogether affected in a countryside upheaval that lasted with varying intensity, for a decade. -- from 1966 to 1976, when Mao died."

"With the Cultural Revolution, he [Mao] seemed to sideline economic development in favor of a large-scale engineering of human souls and minds." "All factions claimed recognition as the true voice of the Chairman. By early 1967, workers had joined the fray, most significantly in Shanghai, where they surpassed Red Guards in revolutionary fervor." "Growing alarmed by the sight of continuous revolution, Mao tried to restore order in the cities, exiling millions of young urban men and women to the countryside to 'learn from the peasants.' "

The great question of China's Maoist experiment looms over the United States as Donald Trump vacates the White House: Why did a rich and powerful society suddenly start destroying itself? 'There were' [Tony] Judt wrote, 'no external inputs, no new kinds of people only the political class breeding itself.' "Trump emerged six years later, channeling an iconoclastic fury at the inbred class and its cherished monuments. But the problems of political representation debilitating society remain treacherously unresolved. From transactional years of Trump passing into history, the United States seems to have completed only the first phase of its own cultural revolution."

#Jon Lee Anderson, "The Vanishing Wild" The New Yorker, February 1, 2021. - "For decades, tourism accounted for about a tenth of the Kenyan economy, largely driven by the country's natural splendor." "Fifty years ago, Kenya had a hundred and sixty thousand elephants. Today, there are thirty-five thousand. A population of twenty thousand black rhinos is down to about a thousand, and only two northern white rhinos remain."

"Land that has always been held communally is split into individual plots --but the new owners often find that their parcels are not large enough to maintain their traditional way of life." "For conservationists, the challenge is to convince indigenous people that tourism and eco-businesses can earn them as much as selling their land or leasing it to commercial farmers."

"The carnivore ecologist Mordecai Ogoda has drawn attention by campaigning against what he calls 'white colonist' control of wildlife tourism and conservation. The Kenyan conservationist, Kahumbu, profiled in 'The New Yorker,' has said: 'Wildlife numbers are plummeting across the continent without the buy-in of Africans. My bottom line on this issue of the apparent racial divide in conservation is that we cannot really complain if we are not taking action. We must be the catalysts for the change we want to see."

"Over the years, more than seventy rangers have been killed in gun battles with poachers; hundreds more have been wounded."

#Jamie Raskin's Jiujitsu Trap- MSNBC's legal analyst has said that: "Jamie Raskin is using a great deal of constitutional jujitsu here." He and his fellow managers "did not issue a subpoena, they just requested or invited him to come, and President Trump declined." The analyst said that the Senate would be able to  take "that negative inference from a defendant's silence, which would set a precedent for any future criminal trial against Mr. Trump."

#In the House debate on impeachment, Jason Smith of Missouri said that impeachment would "bring up the hate and fire more than ever before." Bob Good of Virginia cautioned  that impeachment would "further offend Trump voters." "In the end, it is the Republicans who seem frightened -- paralyzed by fear," -- as Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat put it.

Trump Gets Dumped, and a Man With a Plan, Etc.

 #Jane Mayer, "Trump Gets Dumped," The New Yorker, February 1, 2021. - "Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of McConnell's rupture with Trump may not be that it happened, but rather, that it took so long -- and the leader of the Party in Congress countenanced so much damage along the way." Adam Jentleson, a former top Democratic aide, and the author of 'Kill Switch,' a new book about the Senate, said of McConnell: 'He should be deservingly held accountable for spending more than a month giving credence to Trump's claims of election fraud -- on the Senate floor.' Jentleson added that McConnell, by failing to speak out earlier, had 'offered legitimacy to Trump's war on the truth.' 'Other Republicans took the signals from McConnell and continued to fan the flames. You can blame the rioters, but the entire Republican Party was telling them their claims were legitimate.' "

According to some polls, "as many as eighty-two per cent of Republican voters believed Trump's false claims of fraud."  "It's pretty obvious that for McConnell, one of the reasons he was so indulgent of Trump was Georgia."

"In a combative Senate speech six days after the election, McConnell declared that Trump was 'a hundred per cent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.' "

' "I think McConnell is trying to have it both ways, [Stuart] Stevens [a Republican strategist] told me. 'He absolutely doesn't want to impeach and convict Trump. It would split his base and cause members of his caucus to face primary challengers.' Al Cross, a veteran political reporter, said that: 'I think he sees a chance to make Trump this generation's version of Nixon, leaving in doubt who is at the top of the Republican heap. Barring Trump  would also guarantee that a different Republican will secure the Party's nomination for President in 2024.' "

#Margaret Talbot, "Man With a Plan," The New Yorker, February 1, 2021. "They [the GOP] helped create a climate in which scorn for the purpose and efficacy of government dashed away many Americans' expectations that it would do much for them." Guy Molyneux, a pollster conducting surveys for the 'Center for American Progress,' "has found that non-college whites believe government has let them down, but most have no principled or ideological objections to government playing a strong role in the economy. Although just 20 percent trust the federal government, 50 percent also say that it should take a more active role in solving the nation's economic and social problems."

"But with congressional Republicans still stoking fears of socialism and the 'deep state,' it will take persistent eloquence and empathy from the explainer-in-chief to make the case for government's role. Biden is sometimes compared with Franklin Roosevelt. Both inherited a profound and confounding national crisis and promoted a belief that government can assuage it. Both men's fundamental optimism seems compassionate rather than naive."

Talbot also cites a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that shows "about fifty per cent of Americans hold a favorable view of the A.C.A., and seventy-nine per cent want to retain the preexisting-conditions provision." Other polls show a higher favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, once very unpopular with the U.S public.

#Bryce Covert, "A Wrench in the Works," The Nation, 2.8 - 15.2021. - "The EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] filed just 93 lawsuits in fiscal year 2020, compared with 144 the year before, and 199 in fiscal year 2018." " 'Under [Janet] Ghillon [EEOC chair], the EEOC is really trying to implement the Chamber of Commerce agenda' says David Lopez, who served as the commission's general counsel from 2010 to 2016..." 

"The EEOC recently completed an internal analysis of hundreds of failed conciliations, and found that the two primary reasons they didn't work were because employers declined to participate, and the parties couldn't agree on a monetary figure. And Dhillon pushed forward with the permanent rule before her pilot program [for change] could be analyzed."

"Even with the new demands placed on the EEOC staff, their ranks have thinned. There were 1,937 full-time employees in fiscal year 2020, a decrease from 2,060 in 2019, and the lowest since 2014..." "Dhillon made it clear she didn't want to spend money on hiring staff, according to a current EEOC official."

Congress gave the EEOC litigation authority in 1972, "recognizing that it wasn't effective without it. Without a serious threat that the EEOC will sue, the deterrent effect disappears."

#John Seabrook, "Office Space," The New Yorker, February 1, 2021. - "Managers -- and workers -- are trying to figure out what their post-pandemic offices will look like, and how to balance what appears to be a lasting shift toward no more work with the advantages of the physical workplace." "Thirty per cent of supervisors said that they were more productive at home; only seven per cent said people were getting less done." According to a Danish study, "people working in open offices use sixty-two more sick leave."

"The white-collar workplace has never been regulated like manufacturing,  construction, and health care sectors, where the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets health and safety rules." "Fifty-seven per cent of [poll] respondents thought that the stigma of working remotely would linger after the pandemic." "Facebook has said that it expects half its workforce to be remote by 2030. Twitter told its employees that they never have to return to the office."

ADDENDUMS:

*President Biden has removed the terrorist designation from the Houthi rebels in Yemen. He worried that it is bringing more pain to millions of starving people than to the rebels.

*61 House Republicans voted to strip Rep. Liz Chaney (Rep.-Wyo.) of her leadership role.

#Democrats have unveiled a proposal that would provide $3,600 over the course of the year per child under the age of 6, and $3,000 per child aged 6 to 17. It would diminish for Americans earning $75,000 per year, as well as couples jointly earning more than $150,000 per year. The payments would be sent monthly.

A Succession Plot Foiled; Georgia's Political Importance Exaggerated

 I. A Succession Plot Foiled

President Trump had begun badgering Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, to intervene in lawsuits filed by his allies about elections results, and to appoint a special counsel. Rosen refused. Trump then turned to Jeffrey Clark, who was an assistant attorney general. Clark had been appointed in 2018 to head the Department of Justice's environmental division, but became the acting head of the civil division in September.

Clark's believe in fraud tainting the election was based not on inside information or some expert's reading of the law, but -- he reportedly told colleagues -- on spending a lot of time reading on the Internet.

Under the quaint, pre-Trump practices of "norms" and "propriety," Clark would not have spoken directly to the president without his bosses' permission. But Trump and Clark apparently developed a plan in which the president would fire Rosen and install Clark in his place. Clark would then use the DOJ's power to assist Trump's efforts to stay in office, by taking cases to the Supreme Court.

Rosen and other officials were apparently stunned by the subterfuge. The ploy came to a head in a White House meeting where Clark and Rosen made their respective cases to Trump, who was persuaded not to fire Rosen after top Justice Department officials threatened to resign en masse if he did so. 

Trump's real aim seems to have been giving the appearance of a federal challenge to the vote, which would have given Georgia legislators a pretext to throw out the state's election results. That seems unlikely to have worked, even with a DOJ letter; if legislators had acted, the matter would have ended up in court, and likely been overturned; and anyway, being awarded Georgia's electoral votes wouldn't have mattered enough to make Trump the winner.

II. More Georgia Meddling

Continuing with President Trump's election meddling in Georgia, he called Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp on the morning of December 5th. Trump demanded that Kemp overturn Biden's victory in Georgia. And at a rally in support of U.S. senators Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue, he slammed Kemp for refusing to support his authoritarian scheme to retain power. He wanted Kemp to call a special session of the state legislature to elect a slate of electors who would back Trump, and he also wanted an audit of signatures on mail-in ballots.

Trump did not originate the idea of naming a slate of electors who did not represent the results of a election in a state. During the long recount of the results of the Gore-Bush election in Florida, there were serious discussions to form a slate of electors who would be pledged to vote for Trump in the electoral college. Also, there were serious discussions in the Trump campaign to create slates of electors pledged to Trump, regardless of the elections in their respective states. Specifically, Trump summoned the Republican leaders in both houses of Michigan's legislature to the White House. Although both leaders said they did not discuss slates for the electoral college, to do so -- even if it happened -- would have meant the end of the political careers of the two Michigan political leaders, and further political trouble for Trump.

The takeaway from the intense focus on Georgia is that even without Georgia's 16 electoral votes, Joe Biden would have had 290 electoral votes, 20 more than the 270 needed to win the election; also, if the Trump campaign was somehow able to switch Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes, Biden would still  have won. Biden carried Pennsylvania by over 80,000 votes.

After the counting was done in Wisconsin, Trump was about 20,000 votes behind; however, his campaign wanted recounts only in the two Wisconsin counties with the highest percentage of minorities. In Michigan, Trump was behind by about 150,000 votes when the votes were certified. It would have taken massive fraud to negate that huge a margin.

Joe Biden garnered over 7 million more votes than President Trump, which is the largest popular vote margin that an incumbent president has been defeated in a good long time.

ADDENDUMS:

*Sheelah Kolhatkar, "In My Room," The New Yorker, January 25, 2021. - "Testing wastewater turned out to be simpler than testing individuals; a picture of a whole community could be created while people waited in long lines to get nasal swabs."

*Henry Alford, "Cocoon," Same as above. - "Ours is an age of infantilization and cosseting: our TV shows come with trigger warnings; our waistbands are elasticized; our vitamins gummied." 

*Amy Davidson Sorkin, "Fear Itself," Same as above. - "On Wednesday night, just hours after the House vote, Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, told Sean Hannity on Fox News, that the impeachment was itself an incitement."

Georgia on My Mind

 Georgia, Georgia, Georgia on My Mind - Given the extent to which former President Trump has been willing to go to denigrate the November 3rd election as a fraud and a sham, which he nonetheless claims he won by a landslide, it is remarkable the lengths he has gone to overturn the election in the state of Georgia. In the process he has very likely violated Georgia law, and likely federal law, also. 

David J. Worley, a lawyer and the only Democrat on the state elections board, has cited Georgia Code 821-2-604, which makes it a crime to solicit someone else to commit election fraud. Violation of it can result in a three-year prison term. Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, charges that Trump "knowingly and willfully" pressured  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to count nonexistent votes for Trump. Trump was not pushing for an "honest tally" when he implored Raffensperfger to find 11,780 votes to credit for him. 

Michael F. Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, said: "His best defense would be to plead insanity." Other legal scholars said Trump may have violated 18 U.S. Code 241, which makes it illegal to participate in a conspiracy against people exercising their civil rights.

Rick Hasen, considered to be America's top election expert, has accused Trump of "related ballot stuffing" in what he calls Trump's "shakedown" call to Raffensperger. Hasen was referring to what may have been Trump's last call to Raffensperger, as Trump had talked to Raffensperger several times before. On one of these earlier calls, another state elections official had listened in, and confirmed that Trump had implored Raffensperger to commit an illegal act.

In a December 23rd call, Trump urged state elections investigators to "find the fraud." Intervening in an ongoing investigation could be charged as obstruction of justice.

Before President Trump's plane landed in Georgia for him to attend a rally, he phoned Sen. Kelly Loeffler, trying to hold on to her U.S. Senate seat, he warned that he "would do a number on her" if she didn't announce support for his electoral college challenges.

Among the lesser interventions into Georgia elections by Donald Trump, was the abrupt departure of U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak. Pak apparently angered Trump because he wasn't doing enough to "find the fraud." The Justice Department is currently investigating the Pak departure. The normal succession would have been for Pak's deputy to replace him, at least temporarily, but Trump chose someone who was out of the line of succession.

Close Down Guantanamo Prison

 In a statement issued on February 2nd, Scott Roehm, Washington director at the Center for Victims of Torture noted that Joe Biden has long backed closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison --which former President Barack Obama, under whom Biden was vice president, promised but failed to do during his eight years in office.

"If the president is determined to close the prison, he can, and in  relatively short order," Roehm said. "Unless and until he does, Guantanamo's corrosive impact -- both literally and for what it represents-- will continue to deepen and spread." 

As 'PBS News Hour' noted last month, Biden Defense Secretary Gen. Lloyd Austin also said "he would follow through on President Obama's efforts to close Guantanamo Bay." 

For over 19 years, the U.S. has drawn global condemnation for mistreating Gitmo prisoners who have been tortured and held without trial. After prosecutors filed charges against three longtime detainees last month, Amnesty International reiterated its demands demands that Biden end military commissions and close down the facility.

The human rights group's U.S. arm was among the 111 groups that signed on to the new letter to Biden, which declares that "it is long past time for both a sea change in the United States' approach to national and human security, and a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the 9/11 approach has caused."

"Closing Guantanamo and ending indefinite detention of those held there is a necessary step towards those ends." the letter continues. "We urge you to act without delay, and in a just manner that considers the harm done to the men who have been imprisoned without charge or fair trials for nearly 20 years."

The letter details parts of the  prison' widely denounced history:

     Among a broad range of human  rights violations perpetrated against predominantly Muslim                   communities, Guantanamo -- designed specifically to evade legal constraints, and where Bush                 administration officials incubated torture -- is the iconic example of the post-9/11 abandonment of         the rule of law. Nearly 800 Muslim men and boys were held at Guantanamo after 2002, all but a             handful without charge or trial. Forty remain, at the astronomical cost of $540 million per year,              making Guantanamo the most expensive prison in the world.  

    Guantanamo embodies the fact that, for nearly two decades following the September 11, 2001                attacks, the United States government has viewed communities of color -- citizens and non-citizens        alike -- through a security threat lens, to devastating consequences. This is not a problem of the past.     Guantanamo continues to cause escalating and profound damage to the men who still languish there,     and the approach it exemplifies continues to fuel and justify bigotry, stereotyping, and stigma.                 Guantanamo entrenches racial divisions and racism more broadly, and risks facilitating additional            rights violations. 

Biden's predecessor, former President Donald Trump, vowed as a candidate that he would keep Gitmo open and "load it up with some bad dudes."  

Trump also "proposed sending undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo to be held as 'enemy combatants,' " the letter notes. "He further built upon the discriminatory  animus, policies, and practices that Guantanamo represents through his odious Muslim Ban, each iteration of which was explicitly promulgated under the false pretense of protecting the nation from terrorism. And the Trump administration's militarized federal response to protests against the extrajudicial killings of George Floyd and other Black people was fueled by the war-based post-9/11 security architecture and mindset that Guantanamo epitomizes." 

The Wealthy Do Well in Pandemic

 #Although most Americans currently face hard times with unemployment surging to the levels of the Great Depression, and enormous numbers of people sick or dying from the coronavirus pandemic, the nation's super-rich remain a notable exception.

Financially, they are doing remarkably well. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, as nearly 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the wealth of America's 630 billionaires grew by nearly 14 percent. During April 2020 alone, their wealth increased by over $406 billion, bringing it to $3.4 trillion. According to estimates by 'Forbes', the 400 richest Americans now possess as much wealth as held by nearly two-thirds of American households combined.

During this time of economic crisis, two features of the U.S. government's economic bailout legislation facilitated the burgeoning of billionaire's fortunes: first, the provision of direct subsidies to the wealthy and their corporations, and, second, the gift of huge tax breaks to rich Americans and their businesses. Consequently, although the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, stock prices, helped along by the infusion of cash, are once again soaring.

#TRUMP WATCH: Trump Dumped - A regular feature of the 'Sierra' magazine'.

*Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump 51.1 to 47.1 percent, the worst presidential incumbent defeat since Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover. 

*The lame duck Trump administration begins the process of selling oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

*In a 2-1 ruling, 'Sierra Club v. Trump', a federal appeals court concludes that the Trump administration's attempt to use $3.6 billion in military funding to pay for a border wall is illegal.

*US Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott acknowledges that his agency chose to build sections of the wall in wildlife preserves because it was cheaper than building on privately owned land. 

*A federal judge rules that William Perry Pendley is serving unlawfully as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, calling into question Pendley's moves to open public lands to oil and gas drilling.

*The US Forest Service strips protections from all 16.7 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, one of the world's largest temperate rainforests. 

*The EPA postpones an internal speaker series about environmental justice after Trump labels it a "divisive, un-American propaganda session."

*Wyoming representative Liz Cheney and EPA head Andrew Wheeler ask the Department of Justice to investigate whether anti-fracking efforts by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups are linked to Russia or China.

*The Trump administration removes endangered species protection for the gray wolf.

#Statement of the Annual Meeting of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, issued on May 23, 2020.

"Resumption of nuclear explosive testing is absolutely unacceptable. Even discussing nuclear testing again is dangerously destabilizing. Yet according to news reports, such discussions have recently been held in the Trump White House. US resumption of nuclear testing would lead to testing by other states -- possibly China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and DPRK. It would accelerate the emerging nuclear arms race, and damage prospects for nuclear arms control negotiations. A nuclear explosive test is itself a kind of threat. Testing would generate fear and mistrust, and would entrench reliance on nuclear arms. It would move the world away from, rather than towards, a world free of nuclear weapons. Nuclear explosive testing must not happen, and there must not even be signals of its possibility. Instead the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty should be brought into legal force.

This episode comes in the context of ongoing upgrading of nuclear forces by the world's nuclear-armed states. It is supported by extensive laboratory research and experimentation, which in part serves as a substitute for functions once served by nuclear explosive testing. So, even as we demand that such testing not be resumed, we must recognize the dangers inherent in the ongoing nuclear weapons enterprise. Those dangers are now mostly out of sight of the public and subject to little media scrutiny, but they are real. They too must be addressed, which in the end will require the global abolition of nuclear arms."

Destroying the ISIS Capital: Raqqa

 #Anand Gopal, "Clean Hands," The New Yorker, December 21, 2020. - "For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. Nearly eighty per cent of the city, which had a population of three hundred thousand, was destroyed." "What is certain is that the decimation of Raqqa is unlike anything seen in an American conflict since the Second World War. But Raqqa was no Normandy. Although many Syrians fought valiantly against ISIS and lost their lives, the U.S., apart from a few hundred Special Forces on the ground, relied on  overwhelming airpower. Raqqa -- a war fought from cavernous control rooms thousands of miles away, or from aircraft  thousands of feet in the sky -- is the true face of modern American combat."

Neil Renic, a scholar of international relations, and author of 'Asymmetric Killing: Risk Avoidance, Just War, and the Warrior Ethos', suggests that when one side fully removes itself from danger -- even if it goes to considerable lengths to protect civilians -- it violates the ethos of humane warfare. " 'It's clear that risk-free combat has brought warfare into new moral  territory, requiring us to interrogate our old notions of battlefield right and wrong.' "

"During the American Civil War, the Union implemented the Liber Code, which ought to restrict the imposition of unnecessary suffering -- torture or poisoning, for example -- on the enemy. The code also  enshrined as legal convention the principle of 'military necessity': if violence had a strategic purpose -- that is, it could win a war -- it was allowed."

"In 1942, British policy actually banned aircraft from targeting military facilities, ordering them instead to strike working-class areas of German cities -- 'for the sake of increasing terror,' as Churchill later put it." "In all, Allied terror raids may have claimed some half a million civilian lives. The pattern continued in the Korean War; yet the end result looked no different from Raqqa: a large civilian death toll, honeycombed apartment buildings, streets choked with rubble, entire neighborhoods flattened."

"When a colleague and I visited, a year after the raids, we documented at least a hundred and twenty dead civilians, and found no evidence that any ISIS members had been present near the houses [we focused on.]" 

" 'We take all measures during the targeting process...to comply with the principles of the Law of Armed Conflict,' said Marine Major J.T. Rankine. The essence of this legal code is that militaries cannot "intentionally kill civilians." "During the coalition's campaign against ISIS, it often based its bombing decisions on faulty assumptions about civilian life; much of the destruction in Raqqa followed the example of the al-Layla household: death by a thousand proportional strikes."

"The U.S. uses a much looser interpretation of intentionally and proportionality than most human rights groups do." "For Neil Renic, wars waged exclusively through drones, therefore point to the 'profound discord between what is lawful on the battlefield and what is moral. If the Afghan war continued for another twenty years, it's doubtful whether it would arouse much domestic opposition, even though the overall suffering may be as great as a wanton slaughter that ended in a decisive victory.' "

"After 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which Presidents have since invoked to justify at least thirty-seven military activities in fourteen countries, including the U.S. war in Syria, without a formal declaration or public debate."

ADDENDUMS:

*Simon Shuster, "The cost of terror hits home," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "The majority of deadly extremist incidents in the U.S. are motivated by far-right ideologies, especially white supremacy, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Yet the threat of Islamist radicalization commands a far greater share of government resources."

*Eben Shapiro, "CEOs step into the breach," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - " 'With our country in the midst of a pandemic, business leaders recognize that ongoing divisions and distrust in our political system threatens the economic recovery and job creation our country desperately needs,' says the Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs of the nation's biggest corporations."

*Belinda Luscombe, "Frayed ties," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "A postelection Pew Research Center survey found that fewer than 2% of voters felt those who voted for the other party understood them very well, and only 13% of Joe Biden's voters and 5% of Donald Trump's voters expressed any desire for future unity."

China Syndrome and Saving the Mail

 #Jeet Heer, "China Syndrome," The Nation, 1.25 - 2.1, 2021. - "The myth of China as Frankenstein is designed to assuage the American conscience: We want only to improve the world -- and created a monster by accident." "Eager to enrich big business, successive American presidents turned a blind eye to China's exploitative labor practices, minimal environmental protections, and lack of democracy."

"Donald Trump rode to electoral victory in 2016 in no small part by harnessing anti-trade emotions and promising to get tough with China." "As Biden unveils his foreign policy team, it's clear that [Tony] Blinken [Secretary of State] represents the new generation of China hawks in the Democratic Party."  'These two powers are jockeying for influence,' Stephen Wortheim, of the Quincy Institute, tells me, 'and China has gotten significantly stronger in its own region in military terms, and that's why there was such a fuss about China's claims in the South China Sea.' Wortheim adds: 'For many political leaders in Washington, it's OK for the United States to have a sphere of influence that is global. It's not OK for China to have a sphere of influence that is regional.' "

"Far from being the Frankenstein monster of Nixon's imagination, or be the world dictator feared by the hawks, China is an ordinary great power." "Just as the original Cold War ushered in McCarthyism and Cointelpro, it's not hard to imagine a New Cold War, fueling its own instances of horrific xenophobia -- some of which we've already seen in the scapegoating of Asian Americans during the pandemic."

"Cooperation and competition define the two poles of the Democratic debates over China." "The Brookings Institution's Thomas Weight is a leading proponent of the idea that cooperation and competition can be combined. Best described as a moderate hawk, he argues that selective economic decoupling would allow China and the United States to more cautiously engage the other." "Rather than concentrate industries in one country, there is a sound rationale for distributing production more evenly around the world so that supply chains bottlenecks don't form. But in selective areas like human rights, environmental protections, and labor rights, progressives should take advantage of the fact that they'll have willing partners in the White House. The most important role that progressives can play is to continue offering a realistic view of China, in contrast to the myths that dominate the national security establishment."

#Jake Bittle, "Saving the Mail," The Nation,  1.25 - 2.1, 2021. - Louis DeJoy has no fixed term            limits, "only the board of governors has the power to replace him. All of its current members were appointed by Trump, which allowed the board to  ram through DeJoy's nomination last spring."

"The first and most important task is the repeal of the pre-funding mandate, a 2006 law that requires the USPS to fund retiree health benefits up to five decades in advance." "Other bills could allow the Postal Service to raise revenues through measures like offering low-interest bank accounts to the general public."

ADDENDUMS:

*Former military general Lloyd Austin was confirmed as Secretary of Defense by a 93 to 2 vote in the U.S. Senate. Senators Mike Lee (UTAH) and Josh Hawley (MO.) voted no.

*Black earnings in low-income households are predicted to fall by 35% compared with 2018, reversing gains since the last economic recovery.

*A YouGov poll published on January 17, showed that 54% said the biggest threat to the U.S. comes from "other people in America." Seven in ten respondents said U.S. democracy today is "threatened," while only 29% say it's "secure." 51% believe political violence will increase.

U.S. Homelessness, and Selective Other Issues

 #Dale Maharidge, "How America Chose Homelessness," The Nation, 1.25 - 2.1,  2021. - "The United States is facing an unprecedented homelessness crisis, that is as predictable as it was avoidable. In a white paper titled 'The Covid-19 Eviction Crisis,' the consortium estimated that 'in the absence of robust and swift intervention, an estimated 30-40 million people in America could be at risk of eviction in the next several months.' Even if the moratoriums are extended again (and then again), tenants will at some point have to pay their landlords all of the accrued  back rent." "Already, nearly 12 million households owe an average of $5,850 in overdue rent and utilities, according to Moody's Analytics." "In New York City, renters represent 67percent of households, while in neighboring Newark, the number jumps to nearly 78 percent."

Attorney Gary Blasi, cofounder of the Eviction Defense Center, says: "On the track we are on now, it will be the biggest mass displacement of people in one area of the United States in history. According to an August report by a team of housing experts, nearly half of all renter households in the United States, 'were already cost-burdened,' which means paying more that 30 percent of monthly income on rent. "At the start of the pandemic, 10.9 million households -- one quarter of all renters -- spent more than 50 percent of their income in rent." "About half of the 47.5 million rental units in the United States are properties owned by mon-and-pop operations, many at risk of foreclosure if they don't pay their mortgages and taxes."

#Katha Pollitt, "The Weight of Women," The Nation, 1.25 - 2.1, 2021. -"According to a report by The Century Foundation and The Center for American Progress, 'even a 5 percent decline' in mothers' economic participation 'would undo the past 25 years of progress.' " "On the downside, four times as many people who have lost their jobs are women."

In a forthcoming paper in 'Gender & Society,' five sociologists review the literature based on gender differences in reducing working hours. "One finding was that by early June 2020, 64% of college-educated mothers had reduced their working hours, compared to 36% of college-educated fathers, and 52% of college-educated women without young children. In early April, 1 in 3 mothers reported that they were the main caregivers, compared to 1 in 10 working fathers." "Another report was that 77% of employed mothers report being mainly responsible for housework, 61% responsible for childcare, and 78% taking the lead on helping with their children's remote learning."

#Lawrence Wright, "The Plague Years," The New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2021. - Johnny Latouf runs the Skylark Lounge in Austin, Texas. He told Lawrence Wright: "When the musicians get laid off and the bands disperse and go their separate ways, then you've actually broken up 'their' businesses." He added that: "COVID killed off more than people with preexisting conditions. Lots of businesses have preexisting conditions." 

Wright believes that the other quality in doing well in the pandemic crisis is "strong, compassionate, decisive leaders who speak candidly with their customers." He contrasts Denmark and the United States on the basis of which nation has become more unified since the contagion  emerged: thus, 72% in Denmark believe that their nation has become more unified, versus 18% in the U.S.

"Trump with his words and his example became not a leader but a saboteur. Her subverted his health agencies by installing political operatives who meddled with the science and suppressed the truth."

#David Klion, "Ex-Friends," The Nation, 1.25 - 2.1, 2021. - "For [Anne] Applebaum, the question is how her peers -- all of whom at the turn of the century, supported the pro-European, pro-rule-of-law, pro-market consensus that dominated not only center-right, but also the center-left politics after the fall of communism -- have come to avow reactionary conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, and to show a slavish loyalty to demagogues like Donald Trump and Viktor Orban." "Even to the extent that she [Applebaum] is right about minimal material needs being met, it's frankly astonishing that she doesn't understand how ordinary people -- as opposed to her well-connected friends --could be experiencing a crisis of meaning and dignity in a political order that expects them to be satisfied with cheap consumer goods and privatized essential services."

"If she [Applebaum] rejects the argument that globalization  and inequality led to the far-right's revival, she doesn't even glancingly acknowledge the argument that the post-9/11 wars and crackdowns on civil liberties might also have played a role."

ADDENDUMS:

*A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40% said they will definitely get inoculated when they can, and 23% said they probably will. Just one quarter of Republicans  said they definitely will.

*Dr. Anthony Fauci is looking for a vaccination rate of 70 to 85%. Polls of prospective vaccination takers indicate it may be difficult to reach Fauci's desired vaccination rate range.