Most Say Increase In Disasters Due To Climate Change (Caused By Human Activity)

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll - done on October 6th and 7th of a nationwide sample of 1,604 adults, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Trump's Mass Deportation Plan Would Be Disastrous

 

From The Washington Post:

Trump’s plan to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in history are no secret — he refers to them frequently in stump speeches. And the outlines of the plan have been amply documented. Trump is aiming to expel at least 15 million undocumented people from the country. (For a sense of scale, compare this figure to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which currently protects more than 500,000 “dreamers.”) These vulnerable millions know no other country but this one. If they are forced to leave everything they have behind overnight, their anguish will make the hideous stories of family separations we heard during the first Trump term pale in comparison.

If carried out, Trump’s planned mass deportation would leave nearly 4½ million children in the United States partially or wholly orphaned. The impact of mass deportation on families would be profound. In Florida, nearly 2 million U.S. citizens or non-undocumented residents live in households with at least one undocumented person; in California, it’s more than 4 million. The sudden disappearance of a parent or a main provider will be devastating: It is estimated that more than 900,000 households with at least one child who is a U.S. citizen will fall below the poverty line if the undocumented breadwinners in these families are deported.

A Memorial Will Honor The 146 Victims Of The Triangle Fire

This post is part of an article by David Von Drehle in The Washington Post: 

The challenge when writing history is to break the glass that separates us from the past. To connect somehow with those who lived before us and turn them back into people — not flat abstractions in funny clothes.

The glass-breaking moment for me, when I set out long ago to write a history of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire — the 1911 industrial disaster that shaped the politics of New York and later the entire nation — came when I learned that some of the victims, moments from death yet cheerfully unawares, were singing at the end of their workday. “Every Little Movement,” a hit Broadway show tune, was their equivalent of the latest from Taylor Swift. Some joke or passing remark or reference to a boyfriend had reminded one of them of the lyrics, and when she launched in, others joined her, as happy humans often do.

They were flesh and blood, as real as you and I. And then they were gone — incinerated in their ninth-floor death trap or smashed on the Greenwich Village pavement where they plunged. No publication even bothered to record all their names.

Now, New Yorkers and visitors to the city will be able to have their own glass-breaking moments at the site of the historic fire, which was the deadliest workplace disaster in city history until the day known as 9/11. The Triangle Fire Memorial, a project years in the making, will be dedicated on Wednesday at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street near Washington Square in the heart of Manhattan.

The 146 fire victims — most of them immigrant women from Italy and Eastern Europe — will be restored as actual names of actual people, at the very spot where they passed into history. Their names are cut into the flowing steel of the monument, which — when all the pieces are installed this winter — will stretch like ribbon to ninth-floor windows, then tumble back toward street level, where it will spread its arms to embrace the building where history happened. Light shining through the incised names will reflect on a polished surface, where they will appear as if glowing.

Americans learned to build high-rise buildings before they figured out entirely the dangers that height posed. Thus, an energetic young researcher named Frances Perkins had just begun a job looking into fire risks in factory lofts when she visited a friend for tea on March 25, 1911. Her visit was interrupted by the clanging of fire bells. Looking outside, she saw smoke rising from a nearby 10-story tower.

It was about 4:45 p.m. on a warm, bright Saturday. As the workday ended at the city’s busiest blouse factory, an ash or ember — probably from a cigarette — fell into a bin of cotton scraps, which exploded into flames. Quickly consuming the eighth floor, the fire spread rapidly to the ninth, where it trapped scores of workers.

Along with thousands of New Yorkers weary of winter and enjoying the day, Perkins came running to the scene just as dozens of trapped workers leaped and fell from the windows above.

For the shocked city, the question of fire danger was settled. New Yorkers also knew that the same factory that burned had also been the center of a great labor uprising of female workers. The energy of a young century — labor energy, feminist energy, progressive energy — poured into the frame of this catastrophe. Perkins switched gears to study the question of what to do about unsafe workplaces, and from there she studied the needs of American workers more generally. In 1933, she became the first woman to serve in a president’s Cabinet, as secretary of labor to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Triangle fire, she said, was “the day the New Deal was born.”. . .

History becomes irresistible when sympathy connects us with the past. People lost behind glass come back to life in our minds and hearts, pull us into their stories.

We see ourselves in them. We draw strength from wraiths. We learn courage from ghosts.

Most See Climate Change As Increasing Major Disasters

The chart above reflects the results of the newest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between September 17th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,303 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3.2 points and for registered voters is 3 points. 

Climate Change Causes Insurance To Cut Coverage

 The following is part of an op-ed by Jacob Bogage in The Washington Post:

In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most.

At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to stop writing coverages in some regions, exclude protections from various weather events and raise monthly premiums and deductibles.

Major insurers say they will cut out damage caused by hurricanes, wind and hail from policies underwriting property along coastlines and in wildfire country, according to a voluntary survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state officials that regulates rates and policy forms.

Insurance providers are also more willing to drop existing policies in some locales as they become more vulnerable to natural disasters. Most home insurance coverages are annual terms, so providers are not bound to them for more than one year.

That means individuals and families in places once considered safe from natural catastrophes could lose crucial insurance protections while their natural disaster exposure expands or intensifies as global temperatures rise.

“The same risks that are making insurance more important are making it harder to get,” Carolyn Kousky, associate vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund and nonresident scholar at the Insurance Information Institute, told The Washington Post. . . .

Typical home insurance policies cover damage from all manner of perils, including fire and smoke, wind and hail, plumbing issues, snow and ice, and vandalism and theft. Floods are generally covered by a separate federally administered program.

Under the policy changes many large insurers are reporting to regulators, firms will continue to offer baseline policies to clients in disaster-prone areas, but without protections for damage caused by those disasters. For example, a policy in a region afflicted by hurricanes may exclude coverage for wind or hail damage, or in wildfire country, a policy without fire and smoke protection. . . .

Insurance markets, especially those that serve many regions across the country, rely on relatively stable risk projections when it comes to natural disasters. By balancing wildfire risk during the late spring in the Pacific Northwest with hurricanes in the early fall in the Southeast and winter storms in the Upper Midwest, insurers can spread risk across constituencies. In theory, providers can collect monthly premiums from a broad clientele without paying out claims on too many large-scale disasters at once.

But weather patterns are changing as the planet warms.

Our Democracy Is Still In Danger From The Right

This op-ed is by Max Boot in The Washington Post:

Near the end of last week’s Jan. 6 House committee hearing, former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, a perpetually cheerful former Marine, said the attack on the Capitol “emboldened our enemies by helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative that our system of government doesn’t work, that the United States is in decline. China, the Putin regime in Russia, Tehran, they’re fond of pushing those kinds of narratives — and by the way, they’re wrong.”

But are they wrong? They certainly have been to date; the United States has been defying predictions of doom for more than two centuries. But, as the ads for mutual funds say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. We need to take seriously the possibility that the United States could become a failed democracy, if only to avert that dire fate. There’s a good reason that 85 percent of respondents in a recent surveysaid the country is headed in the wrong direction. 

A lot of the gloom and doom is due, of course, to the high rate of inflation, which will subside in time. But there are more intractable problems, too, such as the persistence of racism and income inequality. That we have far more gun violence than other advanced democracies and yet can’t implement common-sense gun-safety regulations (such as a ban on military-style assault rifles and high-capacity magazines) is a damning indictment of our democracy. So, too, is our failure to do more to address climate change even as temperatures spike. When we do act, it often makes the situation worse, not better.

Unleashed by a right-wing Supreme Court, Republican legislatures around the country are repealing or restricting abortion rights. This is producing horror stories that I never thought I would see in the United States. A woman in Texas had to carry a dead fetus for two weeks because removing it would have required a procedure that is also used in abortions. A woman in Wisconsin bled for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage because medical staff would not remove fetal tissue. A 10-year-old girl was raped in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.

These are the kinds of human rights violations we would be protesting if they occurred in other countries. That they are happening in the United States is an ominous sign of what lies ahead, because other countries in recent years that have taken away abortion rights — Poland and Nicaragua — have also taken away political rights.

We already live in a “backsliding” democracy, where voting rights are being restricted and freedom is under siege. The most severe threat comes from an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party whose maximum leader is an unindicted and unrepentant coup plotter.

Despite the yeoman work of the Jan. 6 committee, former president Donald Trump remains the leading contender for the 2024 GOP nomination — and on the current trajectory he could defeat President Biden, whose unpopularity continues to plumb new depths. We need to be clear about what another Trump term would mean: It could be the death knell for our democracy.

Jonathan Swan of Axios has an alarming report on the preparations in Trump World for returning to power: “Sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority – go after the national security apparatus, ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the ‘woke generals’ at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.”

One of the instruments of Trumpian purges would be Schedule F, a new category of federal employment that Trump created in 2020 (and Biden rescinded), which would have removed tens of thousands of federal employees from civil service protections. By reviving Schedule F, Trump could fire career officials and replace them with ultra-MAGA loyalists. “F” might as well stand for “fascism,” because that is what we will get if Trump were to appoint his most fanatical acolytes to the most powerful positions in government.

I wish I could say that such a scenario is implausible, but it is all too realistic. I used to be an optimist about America’s future. Not anymore. There’s a good reason that so many people I know are acquiring foreign passports and talking about moving somewhere else: The prognosis is grim.

As political scientist Brian Klaas just wrote in the Atlantic, given that the GOP has become “authoritarian to its core,” there are two main ways to save America: Either reform the Republican Party or ensure that it never wields power again. But a MAGA-fied GOP is likely to gain control of at least one chamber of Congress in the fall and could win complete power in 2024.

We seem to be sleepwalking to disaster. If we don’t wake up in time, we could lose our democracy. Just because we’ve avoided a breakdown in the past doesn’t mean we will stave it off in the future.

The 5 Possible Outcomes Of The Debt Limit Crisis

 

The United States government will reach its mandated debt limit in about two weeks. Unless the debt limit is raised, the government will not be able to pay its bills (money Congress mandated be spent in the past). If that happens, it would be disastrous for the U.S. economy. It would also negatively affect the economies of many other nations. It could actually trigger a recession.

Normally, the two parties in Congress agree to raise the debt limit, or at least not block the majority party from raising it. The thought of the government defaulting is just too serious to mess with -- until now!

But this time, the Republicans (led by Minority Leader McConnell) have decided to play politics with the debt limit. They are filibustering the Democratic effort to raise the limit. They are lying -- saying they don't want to let the Democrats spend more money. Evidently, they think the American people are stupid, and don't know that raising the limit would not allow more spending (but would just allow the government to pay for debt already incurred -- much of it by Republicans).

What is going to happen? Nobody knows at this time, but we must hope that politicians come to their senses and raise the limit to avoid the impending disaster. 

NBC News has five possible outcomes of the current political mess caused by Senate Republicans. Here are the five outcomes:

1. Republicans blink and allow a vote

The fastest way to resolve the issue would be for Republicans to back off the filibuster and let the Senate hold a vote at a simple majority threshold. Democrats could pass it with their 50 members and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

But just one senator can object and force a "cloture" vote, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told NBC News on Tuesday he would do so. It would then take 60 votes to overcome that. That means a minimum of 10 Republicans — and for now, there are no takers.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has set up a procedural vote on Wednesday to test the GOP's will to maintain its filibuster.

"If Republicans don't get out of the way and let the Senate take action now, our government will in all likelihood enter default for the first time ever," he said.

2. Democrats blink and use budget process

This remains an option for Democrats. But it'd be more time-consuming. They'd have to revise the budget resolution for their multitrillion-dollar economic package, hold a "vote-a-rama" to allow Senate amendments and pass the same measure in both chambers before they can write a debt limit bill.

President Joe Biden and Schumer have rejected this route. Biden on Monday called it an "incredibly complicated, cumbersome process." Schumer called it "a drawn out, convoluted and risky process."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this week that he had called on Democrats to use the budget process months ago and that they should "get moving."

"The majority doesn’t need our votes," he said. "They just want a bipartisan shortcut around procedural hurdles they can clear on their own."

3. Democrats pierce the filibuster

If Republicans maintain their filibuster, some Democrats have called for using the so-called nuclear option to change the rules and create a legislative exception to the ability to block a debt limit hike.

"I think we ought to have that conversation," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters.

"The idea that you can filibuster the debt ceiling is outrageous. That to me discredits the argument that the filibuster is in fact the way to get bipartisanship. Baloney," he said.

But that option would require all 50 Democrats. Schumer did not say Tuesday whether it's an option.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., threw cold water on that idea on Monday.

"The filibuster has nothing to do with the debt ceiling. We have other tools that we can use. And if we have to use them we should use them," Manchin told reporters. "We can prevent default."

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., another filibuster proponent, did not respond when asked Monday at the Capitol whether she wants to use reconciliation to lift the debt ceiling.

4. A trillion dollar coin?

Some say Biden can resolve the issue with executive action.

One idea is for the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin worth $1 trillion. Another is for the administration to invoke the 14th Amendment to say the debt limit statute is unconstitutional and continue borrowing to pay the country's bills.

But White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed both ideas.

"We obviously look at a range of options and none of those options were viable, either because they wouldn't be accepted by the Federal Reserve, by the guidance of our Treasury secretary, or just by legal restrictions," she said Monday. "So we know that the only path forward here is through Congress acting."

5. Debt limit breach

This is the doomsday scenario the Treasury Department has warned of, setting Oct. 18 as the day of reckoning that, without action, could spark a financial crisis and plunge the economy into recession.

"Failing to increase the debt limit would have catastrophic economic consequences," the department said. "It would cause the government to default on its legal obligations — an unprecedented event in American history."

Fox News LIED About The Electric Grid Failure In Texas

 

The electric grid failure in Texas was a disaster for millions of Texans. That didn't matter to Fox News. They decided to use the disaster to push their own political agenda, and to do they they lied about the cause of the disaster. They said it was caused by the green energy proposal (even though none of that proposal has been instituted in Texas) and the use of renewable energy sources (such as wind energy). They failed to mention that the Texas windmills were not weatherized (as they are in other states), and that is why they froze.

Here is some of what PolitiFact had to say about the Fox News lies:

Fox News and other cable networks are spinning a false narrative that says frozen wind turbines, solar panels and even, somehow, the Green New Deal are to blame for Texas’ crippled energy system, according to a PunditFact review of closed caption information.

It’s true that about half of Texas’ wind power capacity was shut down early in the week as some turbine blades froze over thanks to a rare blast of Arctic air. 

But state energy officials and energy experts said early on that the bigger problem was that the state’s deregulated natural gas infrastructure was ill-equipped for the severe cold.

The Green New Deal hasn’t passed in Texas or elsewhere, and it wouldn’t be binding if it did.

Those are the facts behind the historic crisis in Texas, where rolling blackouts have left Texans boiling snow for water as they wait out the power outages and subfreezing temperatures.

But that’s not the story Fox News personalities are telling. There, hosts have pinned the blame solely or mostly on the frozen wind turbines. They have told viewers that Texans are feeling the sting of green energy policies in a state run for decades by Republicans.

Some of the most widespread and erroneous claims came from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose primetime show is among the most-watched cable news programs.

"Unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas, the power grid in the state became totally reliant on windmills," Carlson said Feb. 16. "Then it got cold, and the windmills broke, because that’s what happens in the Green New Deal."

PolitiFact rated the claim Pants on Fire. But Carlson wasn’t alone.

Between Feb. 15 and Feb. 16 alone, windmills or wind turbines were mentioned more than 100 times on Fox News’ and Fox Business Network’s programs, according to TVEyes, a media monitoring service. The Green New Deal was mentioned more than 25 times.

To a lesser extent, the same terms cropped up repeatedly on Newsmax TV and One America News Network, two newer stations competing for the same audience. . . .

In reality, experts said the primary problem was that Texas’ thermal power plants, which make up a larger share of the state’s energy supply, were not built to withstand the cold. The plants began to go offline just as freezing temperatures boosted the demand for heating, prompting the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to impose rolling blackouts. 

"To think that there’s anything wrong with renewables is entirely a red herring," said Sam Newell, an electricity expert at the Brattle Group, which has analyzed Texas’ power grid. 

This Grocery Store Proved Itself To Be A Good Neighbor

HEB owns 340 grocery stores, most of them located in the state of Texas. They advertise themselves as being a good neighbor to Texans. During the winter crisis last week, one of those stores got a chance to prove that.

Let me preface this post by saying, HEB groceries have done their best to help its customers during the pandemic. They gave their employees a raise to stay on the job, and they have required both customers and employees to wear mask. They have also installed plexiglass shields to keep employees and customers from infecting each other.

When freezing weather, accompanied by lots of snow and ice, struck the state, they stayed open to make sure their customers had groceries to survive during the disaster. But one of their stores had to go above and beyond for their customers

Last Tuesday, there were a couple of hundred customers in the Leander store trying to get groceries to survive the horrible weather. Leander is a suburb just northwest of Austin. As the customers were filling their carts, the unthinkable happened. The electricity went off, leaving them in the dark. 

It also meant that the store's cash registers, scanners, and credit/debit machines would not work (since they require electricity. What were they to do?

They could have just told those customers they couldn't buy any groceries since the electricity was off. But they understood that these people, who had come out in freezing conditions with ice and snow, needed those groceries.

So the store made a decision. They let all of those customers take the groceries home without paying for them. This cost the store some money, but it also proved they were a good neighbor that cared about their customers.

Those customers got online and told their friends what the store had done, and word of it spread like wildfire. It even reached the folks at The Washington Post -- and they wrote an article about the stores generosity and caring.

The store did it to help their customers out of a very bad situation. But it turns out, they got some nice public relations out of their generous gesture. You couldn't buy better public relations from a national newspaper!

NOTE -- In the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you I have been a customer of HEB since moving to the Austin area. The store in Leander is not where I shop, but it's only a few miles from where I live.

Democrats Help People While Republicans Ignore Their Suffering

 

The photo above is very telling. It shows Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz joining Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Rep. Sylvia Garcia in filling boxes at a Food Bank in Houston. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had flown to Houston after raising $4 million dollars to help Texans survive the winter disaster. That money went to local food assistance organizations in Texas.

That's what Democrats do. They help people who are struggling to survive. 

Meanwhile, Texas most prominent politician, Senator Ted Cruz, raised nothing for less fortunate Texans and flew to Cancun with his family to escape the winter disaster. He returned only after being roasted by the media.

But while Cruz's blunder may have been more public, the truth is that he just did what Republicans always do -- ignore the suffering of their fellow Americans while taking care of themselves and their rich friends.

John Pavlovitz probably says it best in this searing post on his own website:

You’ll never go broke betting on Republicans to do the wrong thing.

Of course, Ted Cruz jetted off to Cancun in middle of a monstrous winter storm along with his family, leaving millions in his home state without power; in frozen, flooding homes they could not escape; in mile-long lines in frigid temperatures waiting for a few grocery items to sustain their families—literally dying from events that people who care about humanity don’t try to escape from and the kinds of urgent moments true public servants thrive in.

It was so on brand that we shouldn’t be the least surprised.

Ted Cruz represents the heart and soul of the Republican Party: that’s why he left people in pain, that’s why he fled a crisis, that’s why he will be defended by his callous Republican counterparts—and why so many GOP voters will vote for him again, should they survive their cruelty.

He is not an aberration, he is what they are.

Ted Cruz is the defective moral compass of those who’ve spent the past twelve months doing everything they could to be a deadly pandemic’s greatest allies and causing nearly half a million Americans to die; after four months of stoking fake election fraud conspiracies that incited a murderous assault on our nation’s Capitol, one they exonerated their inexplicable 2024 Presidential hopeful of, despite his clear desire for and work to create; after weeks of being so enamored with defending their disgraced cult leader’s non-existent honor, they’ve been useless in creating a stimulus plan to rescue those millions whose lives have be upended by a historic health crisis he did nothing to combat.

There is no sense of right and wrong here with these people, only what they believe they will get away with: which, according to the steadfast sycophantic adoration of their base, seems to be anything up to and including murder.

Ted Cruz finally wore a mask, not to protect anyone else but to conceal his malfeasance: to try and escape Texas unrecognized, so he could bask in the warm glow of his privilege while the people he daily manipulates to support him have their lives decimated.

While he attempted a brazen and stunningly tone-deaf dereliction of duty, people like Beto O-Rourke (the empathetic leader Texas could have had) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the convenient target’s of Cruz’ stratospheric social media snark rushed to fill the gap in leadership left by Cruz and his cohorts. They are embodying the best of America while Americans face their worst. Again, this is not surprising.

But perhaps the greatest tragedy of the events in Texas isn’t the brutality of the weather or the loss of life or the destruction of property or Ted Cruz’ disgraceful selfishness—or Matt Gaetz and Ben Shapiro’s abjectly ridiculous defense of him.

The greatest tragedy is that Red voters don’t seem to care that Republican politicians don’t give a damn about them; that they are inconsequential, disregarded, useless pawns—and they’re seemingly completely fine with that as long as they can take elections and feel like they’re winning.

Dying in the cold to own the Libs.

GOP Officials Must Take The Blame For Texas' Disaster

You've probably heard by now of the electric grid disaster in the state of Texas. As extremely cold temperatures, accompanied by snow and ice, blanketed the entire state, the power companies have been unable to meet the demand for electricity.

Millions of Texans have been without any electricity -- some of them for more than two days. 

This is inexcusable -- and it did not have to happen.

Our governor, and many of his right-wing cronies are trying to blame the disaster on the "green new deal" and renewable energy sources. That's a stupid and ludicrous argument. No part of the "green new deal" has been passed in Texas, and only a tiny percentage of energy in the state comes from renewable sources.

What is the real reason? The reason is because Texas Republican officials made sure that Texas had its own electric grid. They did that because they didn't want energy sources and electric producers to have to spend money to protect the system from sub-freezing temperatures. They mistakenly thought that was something Texas didn't have to worry about.

The rest of the nation is not having these problems. Why? Because they were smart enough to make sure their energy and electric sources were protected.

Texas did not do that -- and the blame must fall on the state's right-wing Republicans. They thought that squeezing more profits out for wealthy energy interests was more important than protecting the electric grid and its energy producers. They were wrong! And Texas consumers are paying the price.

Now we are hearing the cold snap was a once in a generation thing. That may have been true in the past, but probably not now. This country, and Texas, have been ignoring global climate change. This climate change is not just warming the globe, but has disrupted its weather patterns (including colder winters).

With the changing global weather patterns (due to our misuse of fossil fuels), we can't be sure this kind of cold weather disaster won't happen again for a long time. It could happen again next year, or in the next few years.

Texas must act to weatherize its energy sources and its electric grid. If the rest of the nation can dod it, so can Texas. It just requires some political will to require it. Whining about the costs of doing it should be ignored. We have listened to that whining for far too long -- and that is what has caused the current disaster.

But that is not enough. Winterizing our electric system is just a start. We must also start to take global climate change seriously -- and act to stop it. Failure to do so will just insure that more weather disasters (of all kinds) will happen in the futures, and happen more frequently.

We could start by kicking the GOP out of power in the state. They have shown they care more about the wealthy than the citizens of the state -- and that is unlikely to change.

One Of The Worst Presidential Failures In American History

(This chart is from ourworldindata.org.)

If you listen to Donald Trump, you will hear that the COVID-19 pandemic is virtually over in the United States, that it is under control, and that the Trump administration has done an excellent job in accomplishing that. Nothing could be faster from the truth!

The truth is that the response of the Trump administration has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster, and that is due to the actions (or inaction) of Trump himself. It is one of the worst presidential failures to a crisis in the history of this country.

The following is just part of an excellent column by Paul Waldman in The Washington Post:

There are countries around the world, large and small, where aggressive government action and a mutual commitment by the population have gotten the coronavirus pandemic under control. The United States is not one of them.

Well over 2 million Americans have been infected, over 115,000 of us have died, and rather than falling, our rates of new infections and deaths seem to have stabilized at horrifically high rates.

Yet now, in a propaganda effort that can only be described as obscene, the Trump administration is trying to convince us not only that the pandemic is all but behind us, but also that its spectacularly incompetent response has been a great triumph.

This will without a doubt go down as one of the worst presidential failures in American history. And we can see now that it had three distinct (if overlapping) phases.

The first was the denial phase, in which President Trump dismissed the danger from the virus and did almost nothing to prepare for its arrival. The second was the mismanagement phase, in which his administration utterly failed to control the virus as it swept across the country.

The third was the polarization phase, in which, for his own vulgar political reasons, Trump attacked Democratic governors trying to contain the virus, discouraged social distancing and mask-wearing, and quite intentionally created an atmosphere in which loud refusal to take the measures that we know reduce the spread of infection is how you prove you’re a loyal Republican.

We’re now seeing the effects, as states where Republican governors lifted stay-at-home orders and encouraged people to resume normal commercial and social activities are experiencing dramatic spikes in infections. . . .

This pandemic is an era-defining catastrophe, and it didn’t have to be this way. It’s almost impossible to imagine a president more ill-prepared, by virtue of experience and temperament and judgment, to handle it, and all our worst fears have come true. Don’t let him or any of his lackeys tell you otherwise.

Trump's Lack Of Leadership Has Failed The Nation

It's bad enough that Trump delayed taking any action to curb the Coronavirus epidemic for nearly two months. He was warned about the coming epidemic near the end of January, but did nothing. He was afraid that acting would hurt his chances of being re-elected.

A few days ago, he finally began to admit the seriousness of the situation. Unfortunately, he continues to drag his feet on doing what is needed. Instead, he wants to blame others for his own failings.

The tweet above is a prime example. The governor of Illinois, and several other states, asked the federal government to act to provide states with needed money and medical equipment. Trump's response was to blame them. He wants us to believe that this epidemic is a state problem -- and each state must handle it individually.

He has said, "I am not responsible at all (for the delay in taking effective action)". But he is responsible.

The Coronavirus epidemic has now reached every one of the 50 states -- and there is no doubt that it will get worse in all of those states. It is a true national emergency.

National emergencies cannot effectively be handled by 50 different governors (and numerous mayors and county leaders). National emergencies must be handled by the federal government, because a unified and coordinated response is required. And when a federal government response is required, it is the duty and responsibility of the president to provide leadership for that response.

We have known for a while now that Trump was a poor leader, with his administration awash in chaos and incompetence. But we hoped that in a real national emergency, he would rise above his many shortcomings as past presidents have done. That was a vain hope.

We now face that national emergency, and Trump is displaying a total lack of leadership. Instead of taking responsibility, he still wants to play a blame game. He is an utter failure as a leader -- and that is going to make it much harder for this nation to weather both the epidemic and the economic crisis it faces.

Trump wants to be re-elected. His failure of leadership shows he doesn't deserve that.

Texas Governor Closes All Schools & Restricts Restaurants

Texas has now joined other states in severely restricting the size of crowds. In an executive order, he has closed all the state's schools, banned in-person dining at restaurants, gyms, and bars, restricted access to nursing & retirement homes.

Here is how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports the order by Governor Greg Abbott (pictured):

Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Thursday that bans gatherings of more than 10 people, temporarily closes all Texas schools and prohibits dining-in at bars and restaurants in an effort to combat the novel coronavirus’ spread.

In addition, the order also closes gyms and limits visits to nursing and retirement homes unless providing critical assistance. The order goes into effect at midnight Friday and will last through midnight April 3, Abbott said, with the possibility of it being extended depending on the virus’ spread in Texas and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations. 

“When I declared a disaster last Friday, there were 39 cases of Texans who tested positive for COVID-19. Today, that number has grown by more than 300%. Today, we have more than 140 people in the state of Texas who have tested positive for COVID-19,” Abbott said Thursday during a press conference at the Texas Capitol. . . .

“What we’re dealing with in Texas is not a local disaster, or a regional disaster. It’s far more than a nationwide disaster,” Abbott said. “In fact, it is an international pandemic. The traditional model that we have employed in the state of Texas for such a long time so effectively does not apply to an invisible disease that knows no geographic and no jurisdictional boundaries.”

Abbott said the order was necessary to comply with increased measures from the federal government, such as the CDC’s heightened recommendations to cancel gatherings of 10 or more people.

“There is now sound evidence that community based spread of COVID-19 has begun in Texas,” Hellerstedt said. “COVID-19 is the greatest public health challenge in living memory.”

As of Thursday afternoon, 2,335 people have been tested in private and public health labs, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services’ count. And there have been at least four deaths related to COVID-19 reported this week in Texas.

“The more that people do to reduce their public contact, the sooner the COVID-19 disease will be contained and the sooner this executive order will expire,” Abbott said.

While many school districts across Texas have already announced temporary closures through early April, Abbott stressed that the closures do not mean education stops, and urged online instruction to be provided. In addition, critical infrastructure, businesses, offices and workplaces will remain open — but should allow remote work when feasible, Abbott said.

“The use of drive-through, pick-up or delivery options is allowed and, in fact, highly encouraged throughout the limited duration of this executive order,” Abbott said. “Importantly we want to emphasize that one thing important for all Texans to be able to access right now, obviously, is food.”

Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/article241323531.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/article241323531.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/article241323531.html#storylink=cpy