Voter suppression efforts in Wisconsin backfired

Last week Wisconsin held elections despite efforts by the state’s Democratic governor Tony Evers to postpone the event like other states have done due to fears of people congregating in voting places during this pandemic. But the state’s Republican controlled legislature over-ruled him and it was backed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that has a 5-2 Republican majority. Like many states in the US, the positions on the Supreme Court are elected and people run of partisan platforms. When the governor tried to at least extend the deadline for absentee voting, the legislature again blocked him and took the case to the US Supreme Court that upheld their claim. So the election went ahead with long lines of people who sometimes had to wait for hours to vote. This was especially true in the urban areas where minority and poorer voters are where, as usual, polling stations were much fewer than in more affluent suburban areas.
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The dysfunctional White House response to the pandemic

The verdict is in and the conclusion is that the Trump administration utterly botched its response to the Covid-19 epidemic. Andy Kroll catalogs the many missteps and that the dysfunction extends to the coronavirus task force created by Trump, compounded by the fact that Trump seems to have enormous faith in his son-in-law Jared Kushner to deal with complex matters even though there is no evidence that he is at all competent. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth just like Trump and they both seem to think that this denotes ability.
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Another excellent show from John Oliver

In the latest episode, he focuses on the people who are most affected by the pandemic, those who have lost their jobs and those who are deemed to be essential workers, and why their current plight is a strong argument for permanently providing the kinds of protections that the government is now trying to temporarily meet, such as universal free health care, paid sick leave, better unemployment benefits. In fact, conservatives, and businesses like Amazon, are worried that the demand for such things will be too strong to resist.

Can capitalism survive the pandemic?

The answer is very likely ‘yes’. The demise of capitalism has been predicted many times since Karl Marx proposed that it would collapse because of its contradictions but it has proven to be remarkably resilient. What usually happens is that following crises, capitalism takes on new forms to escape being taken down completely,. Capitalism, like socialism, is an umbrella term that encompasses many different varieties, from the libertarian laissez faire form whose adherents have a deep belief that any government is unnecessary because the invisible hand of the market will take care of things, to social democratic forms where the government plays a big role in regulating the market and providing a social safety net for its people to shield them from the ravages of extreme capitalism.
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Introducing slow streets

One of the results of the lockdowns is the greatly reduced traffic on the streets. This has resulted in huge reductions in smog levels in cities that used to be plagued with poor air quality. But it has also resulted in some drivers taking advantage to speed. Some cities are now going further and shutting down traffic entirely on some streets, except for pedestrians and cyclists.

One such effort is in the city of Oakland, California that has shut down 74 miles of city streets, labeling them ‘slow streets’, to enable residents to use them to get outdoors and exercise while maintaining the appropriate distance from others and avoiding congesting the city’s parks and other recreational areas. The road will still be open to residents who live there.
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The great toilet paper shortage explained

I have mentioned before my puzzlement as to the run on toilet paper, where people seemed to be buying much more than they needed so that the stores ran out of them. It was put down to irrational hoarding and there were plenty of jokes made about this phenomenon. I even came across Freudian explanations, saying that the control of one’s bowels is a major achievement for little children that they are proud of, and loss of toilet paper was associated with loss of that control in people’s subconscious, which was why they did not want to risk any chance at all of running out.
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Dealing with addictions during lockdowns

My post earlier today about coffee and caffeine addiction made me think later about other addictions and how they are being handled during the lockdowns. For example, alcohol is a common addiction and while some states have declared alcohol stores to be essential services and thus allowed to be open, others have not exempted them from the lockdown. While it might be amusing to joke about alcohol being essential to getting through the boredom of staying at home, there is a more serious side, because closing the stores leaves addicts in those states desperate.

Someone I know is a physician in a state that did not exempt alcohol stores from the lockdown and he said that they have seen a influx of addicts coming to the emergency rooms because of severe withdrawal symptoms. Since they need the emergency room capacity to deal with the coronavirus cases, the addicts have been turned away untreated. While support groups for alcoholics have shifted, like so much else, to the online mode, they have their problems and may not be enough for some people trying to be sober.

That made me think about people who are addicted to harder, illegal drugs, who may have even more severe withdrawal symptoms. What will happen to them? Are their dealers still in business? Are the addicts still going out just to get their drugs? Addiction can make people do desperate things.

Let the grifting begin!

The US has started pumping money into the system, with Congress passing a $2 trillion stimulus package and the Federal Reserve also pumping another $2.3 trillion into the economy. Naturally this has caught the attention of those who are eager to grab some of it to enrich themselves. This is why Congress has tried to create oversight committees to try and ensure that the money is used as intended.

But Donald Trump is a grifter whose family and circle of close associates are also grifters. So it is alarming but not surprising that he has started firing inspectors general, the watchdogs whose job it is to monitor the workings of institutions. One of those fired is the head of the coronavirus bailout oversight board.
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The role of YouTube in spreading coronavirus and other hoaxes

I received a text from a friend in Sri Lanka who forwarded a link to a YouTube video and asked for my ‘professional opinion’ on whether it was credible, even though I am not a professional when it comes to analyzing such things. Even without looking at it I suspected that it was not credible because like many people, my friend is pretty credulous about things that are passed around on Facebook, and other social media, and gets easily alarmed. His last query to me a year ago was about the miracle of fish falling from the sky which consisted of a doctored video that was obviously fake. (He is also very religious.)
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