Month: September 2021

A backlash to the backlash?

benfell

Abortion

I certainly see Kathleen Parker’s logic. She thinks that in so blatantly taking on abortion rights, conservatives have overstepped and will provoke a furious backlash.[1] I can’t tell you she’s wrong.

But if she’s right, it would be a reversal of the trajectory of my entire adult life—I came of age just as Ronald Reagan was about to be elected president—in which conservatism has been ascendant, partly as a backlash to the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s,[2] and increasingly extreme. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Robert Barnes et al., “Supreme Court refuses to block Texas law banning abortions at six weeks,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-six-week-abortion-ban/2021/09/01/e53cf372-0a6b-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Daniela Santamariña, “What abortion policy would look like in the U.S. if Roe v. Wade fell,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/11/abortion-rights-roe-v-wade/

Felicia Sonmez, “Sen. Collins repeatedly asserted that Kavanaugh considered abortion rights settled law. The justice’s decision on Texas’s restrictive law suggests otherwise,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/abortion-collins-supreme-court-kavanaugh/2021/09/02/b6de0b98-0bfa-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Kathleen Parker, “The Supreme Court rides to Biden’s rescue,” Washington Post, September 3, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/03/supreme-court-rides-bidens-rescue/

Associated Press, “Lyft, Uber lash out at legal threat from strict Texas abortion law,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, September 4, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/texas-abortion-ban-lyft-uber-fight-back-1.6165045

Chantal Da Silva, “Texas judge grants restraining order against anti-abortion group, temporarily preventing lawsuits,” NBC News, September 4, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-judge-grants-restraining-order-against-anti-abortion-group-temporarily-n1278509

Pandemic

National

Uché Blackstock, “Two words no parent of a sick child should have to hear: ‘At capacity,’” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/02/picu-hospital-beds-children-covid/

Hannah Knowles and Timothy Bella, “A hospital refused to give ivermectin to a covid patient. Then a judge ordered doctors to administer it,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/31/ohio-ivermectin-lawsuit-hospital-covid/

Emma Goldberg and Emily Anthes, “Hospitalizations for children sharply increase as Delta surges, C.D.C. studies find,” New York Times, September 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/health/delta-children-hospitalization-rates.html

Luke Money, “ICU beds filling up in San Joaquin Valley, triggering hospital surge order,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-03/icu-bed-filling-up-in-san-joaquin-valley-triggering-hospital-surge-order

Tyler Pager and Laurie McGinley, “Top federal health officials warn that booster shots initially may be limited to Pfizer recipients,” Washington Post, September 3, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/03/booster-shot-delay-pfizer-first/

Mary Papenfuss, “15 Miami-Dade Public School Staff Members Die Of COVID In Just 10 Days,” Yahoo! News, September 4, 2021, https://news.yahoo.com/15-miami-dade-public-school-021517732.html

Yoree Koh, “Child Covid-19 Cases Rise in States Where Schools Opened Earliest,” Washington Post, September 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/child-covid-19-cases-rise-in-states-where-schools-opened-earliest-11630834201

Pennsylvania

Maddie Hanna, “Now that Pa. has a school mask mandate, has the rancor subsided? It has not,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 3, 2021, https://www.inquirer.com/news/pa-school-mask-mandate-wolf-philadelphia-20210903.html

Economy

Ben Casselman, “Federal Jobless Aid, a Lifeline to Millions, Reaches an End,” New York Times, September 2, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/business/economy/federal-unemployment-benefit-cutoff.html

John Cassidy, “It’s Still the Coronavirus Economy,” New Yorker, September 4, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/its-still-the-coronavirus-economy

  1. [1]Kathleen Parker, “The Supreme Court rides to Biden’s rescue,” Washington Post, September 3, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/03/supreme-court-rides-bidens-rescue/↩
  2. [2]George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 30th anniversary ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).↩

Britain turning left?

benfell

My landlord seems now to be accepting that I didn’t do anything to flood his garage and basement beneath my apartment. But amidst the chaos yesterday, crisis number one, his extension line to that same flooded space that got disconnected to pull through fiber for Internet service to my apartment got lost.

I have taken photographs for evidence of a lack of damage inside my apartment. I honestly have no clue where the water is coming from.

That’s two dramas in the first four days I have lived in this new apartment. It is now day 5 and neither has been resolved.

Brexit

My skepticism of Matthew Parris’ claim that Britain has turned to the political left in the wake of Brexit[1] is instinctive. I do not know this writer well enough.

What I will suggest is that anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged[2] should recognize an utter impossibility to her utopia. Fundamentally and inescapably human beings are a social species; we rely on each other to survive, physically and psychologically. Capitalist individualism contradicts that reality. No matter how much Rand’s acolytes, who never matured beyond adolescence, may have wet dreams of unrestrained capitalism, it could never actually happen because the social cost would simply be far too high, indeed incomprehensibly so.

Again, I do not know Parris. I also have paid insufficient attention to British politics to evaluate his examples. But I suspect his claim cherry picks those examples; that his claim that Britain is moving left in fact reflects a pause in the neoliberal agenda as its social costs have become apparent.

Neoliberalism is, for capitalist libertarians, I suspect including Parris, merely a baby’s first step. So for capitalist libertarians, a pause looks like a leftward move. But the rest of us should be more careful, particularly as the Tories continue to hold the government.

Matthew Parris, “Brexit Britain has taken a sharp turn to the left,” Times, September 4, 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-britain-has-taken-a-sharp-turn-to-the-left-8vsjf9mn9

Abortion

Sarah Jones, “Texas Is What a Real Mob Looks Like,” New York, September 1, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/texas-6-week-abortion-ban-is-what-a-real-mob-looks-like.html

Robert Barnes et al., “Supreme Court refuses to block Texas law banning abortions at six weeks,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-six-week-abortion-ban/2021/09/01/e53cf372-0a6b-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Daniela Santamariña, “What abortion policy would look like in the U.S. if Roe v. Wade fell,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/11/abortion-rights-roe-v-wade/

Felicia Sonmez, “Sen. Collins repeatedly asserted that Kavanaugh considered abortion rights settled law. The justice’s decision on Texas’s restrictive law suggests otherwise,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/abortion-collins-supreme-court-kavanaugh/2021/09/02/b6de0b98-0bfa-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Chantal Da Silva, “Texas judge grants restraining order against anti-abortion group, temporarily preventing lawsuits,” NBC News, September 4, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-judge-grants-restraining-order-against-anti-abortion-group-temporarily-n1278509

  1. [1]Matthew Parris, “Brexit Britain has taken a sharp turn to the left,” Times, September 4, 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-britain-has-taken-a-sharp-turn-to-the-left-8vsjf9mn9↩
  2. [2]Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Plume, 1999).↩

Joe Manchin’s wrench in the Joe Biden’s monkey works

benfell

I’m still trying to catch up. Meanwhile, there has been a disaster beneath me. There is flooding in the garage and the basement beneath my apartment. My landlord blames me, but there’s no water damage around the sink he thinks is the culprit, my books all still in moving boxes in the kitchen surely would have been damaged, and I honestly don’t see how it could be me.

Infrastructure

Jonathan Chait, “Joe Manchin Has Put Biden’s Presidency in Mortal Danger,” New York, September 2, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/joe-manchin-pause-biden-presidency-failed-danger-congress-democrats.html

Rick Perlstein, “When America Had a Moral Panic Over Inflation,” New York, September 2, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/the-1970s-when-america-had-a-moral-panic-over-inflation.html

Evictions

Ashlyn Still and Alyssa Fowers, “With evictions expected to mount, access to rental aid remains uneven,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/rental-aid-process/

Pandemic

Yesterday, I criticized Nancy Gibbs for what’s really a false analogy[1] in arguing that COVID-19 vaccine refusers should not be denied medical care when resources are tight.[2] But Uché Blackstock makes an argument I’ve aspired to make, but really failed.

A problem with an argument like Gibbs’ is that even as its ethical appeal draws on real world experience, it fails when the rubber hits the road. That’s where Blackstock really succeeds, pointing to her experience having to take her infant to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Imagine, she all but argues, if that PICU had not been available, taken up by a child whose parents had refused the vaccination.[3]

I don’t argue for holding children, let alone infants, responsible for their parents’ sins. But Gibbs’ argument fails precisely because it fails to take account of a reality that people will be denied medical care. The point that Blackstock reaches is that this is not a question of whether we deny care, but rather, who will be denied care and why. In this situation, that why question directly implicates vaccine refusal.

Uché Blackstock, “Two words no parent of a sick child should have to hear: ‘At capacity,’” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/02/picu-hospital-beds-children-covid/

Hannah Knowles and Timothy Bella, “A hospital refused to give ivermectin to a covid patient. Then a judge ordered doctors to administer it,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/31/ohio-ivermectin-lawsuit-hospital-covid/

Abortion

Felicia Sonmez, “Sen. Collins repeatedly asserted that Kavanaugh considered abortion rights settled law. The justice’s decision on Texas’s restrictive law suggests otherwise,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/abortion-collins-supreme-court-kavanaugh/2021/09/02/b6de0b98-0bfa-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

  1. [1]David Benfell, “No more excuses. Mandate the vaccine now,” Not Housebroken, September 2, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/08/22/no-more-excuses-mandate-the-vaccine-now/” target=”_blank”>https://disunitedstates.org/2021/08/22/no-more-excuses-mandate-the-vaccine-now/↩
  2. [2]Nancy Gibbs, “Do the unvaccinated deserve scarce ICU beds?” Washington Post, September 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/do-unvaccinated-deserve-scarce-icu-beds/↩
  3. [3]Uché Blackstock, “Two words no parent of a sick child should have to hear: ‘At capacity,’” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/02/picu-hospital-beds-children-covid/↩

No, vaccine refusal isn’t just like other stupidity

benfell

Somewhere in the confusion of moving, I managed to publish this before it was ready. Oops.

So on Tuesday the movers came and moved my bed and bookshelves. I had already moved all twenty books of books and other media in my library.

That afternoon, Verizon came and installed FiOS at my new address. It’s working great, absolutely splendidly for me.

My new apartment sits atop a garage that the landlord uses for storage. The garage is atop a basement, which the landlord uses as a workshop. In the workshop, there is an old legacy telephone extension line. Or, I should say, was.

It seems that one of the old lines that the installer removed to run fiber to my apartment was that extension line. Oops. I have one very unhappy landlord and I spent hours with Verizon this morning trying to get them to come back out after they failed to show up yesterday to fix it. They are due tomorrow, at least according to an SMS message I received.

Meanwhile I’m moving more stuff into the new apartment, often from the old apartment, but sometimes new stuff because the new space is smaller and I have to make different decisions.

The bad news is that landlords in this part of the world want two months’ notice of intent to vacate. The good news is that this means I still have most of two months to sort it all out.

But God help me if I ever have to move again.

And I’m still not caught up here.

Pandemic

National

Nancy Gibbs argues against denying medical care to those who have refused the COVID-19 vaccine, suggesting that the argument could be applied to any of a number of putatively “stupid” things people do. Of her examples, however, only smoking,[1] by way of second-hand smoke, really even begins to compare to the hazard the unvaccinated pose to others. My obesity certainly endangers myself, but it endangers no one else; COVID-19, on the other hand, is highly transmissible and specifically endangers the very people who would provide care.

Meanwhile, the problems of a medical care system stretched beyond its capacity increase,[2] with the attendant problem that, as Gibbs acknowledges, deserving, or at least more deserving, patients are having trouble accessing care.[3]

Rong-Gong Lin, II, “Anti-vaccine forces pushing ivermectin. It can be toxic, dangerous, officials say,” Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-31/what-is-ivermectin-officials-say-covid-treatment-toxic

Paul Farhi, “Four conservative radio talk-show hosts bashed coronavirus vaccines. Then they got sick,” Washington Post, September 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/conservative-talk-radio-covid-deaths/2021/08/31/a912a89c-0a66-11ec-aea1-42a8138f132a_story.html

Nancy Gibbs, “Do the unvaccinated deserve scarce ICU beds?” Washington Post, September 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/do-unvaccinated-deserve-scarce-icu-beds/

Pennsylvania

Andrew Seidman, “Mask and vaccine mandates have broad support, polls show. But some Pa. Republicans are campaigning against them,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 29, 2021, https://www.inquirer.com/news/pa-republicans-mask-vaccine-mandates-2022-20210829.html

Stephen Caruso, “Pa. GOP candidate says he’ll bring ‘strong men’ to intimidate pro-mask school boards,” Pennsylvania Capital-Star, August 30, 2021, https://www.penncapital-star.com/blog/pa-gop-candidate-says-hell-bring-strong-men-to-intimidate-pro-mask-school-boards/

Megan Guza and Julia Felton, “Pennsylvania mandates masks in K-12 schools, day cares,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 31, 2021, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-to-mandate-masks-in-k-12-schools-day-cares/

Public Source, “School masking required across PA as COVID cases rise,” August 31, 2021, https://www.publicsource.org/important-info-on-coronavirus-preparation-in-allegheny-county/

Paula Reed Ward, “Legal experts say Wolf administration has authority to issue mask mandate,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 31, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/regional/legal-experts-say-wolf-administration-has-authority-to-issue-mask-mandate/

Abortion

Robert Barnes et al., “Supreme Court refuses to block Texas law banning abortions at six weeks,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-six-week-abortion-ban/2021/09/01/e53cf372-0a6b-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Jobs

The evidence that enhanced unemployment benefits have kept workers from seeking employment remains, at best, mixed.[4]

Sarah Chaney Cambon and Danny Dougherty, “States That Cut Unemployment Benefits Saw Limited Impact on Job Growth,” Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/states-that-cut-unemployment-benefits-saw-limited-impact-on-job-growth-11630488601

Voting rights

Jon Kamp, “Texas GOP Lawmakers Send Voting Bill to Governor’s Desk,” Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-gop-lawmakers-send-voting-bill-to-governors-desk-11630449811

Pittsburgh

WTAE, “Strong odor reported in Pittsburgh area reportedly coming from chemical company on Neville Island,” September 2, 2021, https://www.wtae.com/article/strong-odor-in-multiple-downtown-communities-being-investigated/37461467

  1. [1]Nancy Gibbs, “Do the unvaccinated deserve scarce ICU beds?” Washington Post, September 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/do-unvaccinated-deserve-scarce-icu-beds/↩
  2. [2]Brianna Abbott, “Covid-19 Rise, Vaccine Hesitancy Frustrate Doctors in Hospitals Saturated by the Delta Variant,” Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-rise-vaccine-hesitancy-frustrate-doctors-in-hospitals-saturated-by-the-delta-variant-11628760602; Krutika Amin and Cynthia Cox, “Unvaccinated COVID-19 hospitalizations cost the U.S. health system billions of dollars,” Peterson Foundation on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation, August 20, 2021, https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/unvaccinated-covid-patients-cost-the-u-s-health-system-billions-of-dollars/; Hailey Branson-Potts, “Mortuaries fill, hospitals clog in rural California towns with low vaccination rates,“ Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-28/la-me-rural-california-covid-surge-vaccinations-lag; Marisa Fernandez, “As hospitals fill, more ambulances forced to wait,” Axios, August 27, 2021, https://www.axios.com/local-ems-covid-surge-wait-times-611657fc-8ddf-4b32-a6dc-c7f2eb799487.html; Katie MacBride, [Twitter thread], Thread Reader App, August 21, 2021, https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1429287685244420101.html; Michael McGough, “Sacramento hospitals ‘at capacity’ and COVID deaths at 6-month high as delta spreads,” Sacramento Bee, August 26, 2021, https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253761928.html; Sudhin Thanawala and Jay Reeves, “Virus surge breaks hospital records amid rising toll on kids,” Sacramento Bee, August 26, 2021, https://www.sacbee.com/news/article253764343.html↩
  3. [3]Nancy Gibbs, “Do the unvaccinated deserve scarce ICU beds?” Washington Post, September 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/do-unvaccinated-deserve-scarce-icu-beds/↩
  4. [4]Sarah Chaney Cambon and Danny Dougherty, “States That Cut Unemployment Benefits Saw Limited Impact on Job Growth,” Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/states-that-cut-unemployment-benefits-saw-limited-impact-on-job-growth-11630488601↩