The best antidote to hot takes is hard data, and the latest Daily Kos/Civiqs pollis here with your cure. This survey of 1,378 registered voters was conducted online from Oct. 30-Nov. 2 and reveals that 88% of Americans are dissatisfied with the state of democracy in our country.
While 53% of Americans think their quality of life now is as good or better than it was at the beginning of the year, they remain dissatisfied with major aspects of daily life, especially the prices of gasoline (78% dissatisfied), consumer goods (75% dissatisfied), and health care and health insurance (57% dissatisfied). Americans are also broadly dissatisfied with the current state of racial relations (63% dissatisfied), the amount of money they have saved (59% dissatisfied), and the gap in wealth between the rich and everyone else (58% dissatisfied).
Other noteworthy findings in this month’s poll include:
A mere 30% of Americans are satisfied with their local infrastructure.
57% of Americans are satisfied with their housing situation.
51% of Americans are satisfied with their access to health care.
44% of Americans are satisfied with their employment situation, versus only 19% who are dissatisfied.
Half of Americans are dissatisfied with their “freedom” to live life the way they want.
Additional issues surveyed include viewership of Fox News, Newsmax, One American News Network, and MSNBC.
This poll’s numbers highlight the major issues causing distress to Americans today—even as Democrats in Congress work to pass bills that would improve these issues for everyone.
Civiqs is an award-winning survey research firm that conducts scientific public opinion polls on the Internet through its nationally representative online survey panel. Founded in 2013, Civiqs specializes in political and public policy polling. Results from Civiqs’ daily tracking polls can be found online at civiqs.com.
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Maybe if we throw in a free lollipop, like we do with crying children?
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, November 4, 2021
Note: C&J will not appear here on Monday, as we will be returning from a weekend-long seminar on how to turn a clock back one hour. Back Tuesday, unless something goes disastrously wrong and the instructor blows up the time-space continuum. But that rarely happens, usually. —Mgt.
Minimum number of people around the world who have died of Covid-19 as of this week: 5 million
Factor by which Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York City: 7-to-1
Estimated actual cost of the bullshit Arizona election “audit” by the Cyber Ninjas, 50% higher than previous reports: $9 million
Percent of Maine’s total population that’s vaccinated against Covid-19: 70%
Chronological rank of Vermont Supreme Court Justice Beth Robinson among lesbians who have been confirmed to a federal circuit court, as she was this week (2nd Circuit): #1
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I say unto you, you do not know what courage is until you have sat in the basement of a Holiday Inn in Fritters, Alabama, with seven brave souls, led by a librarian, who are fixing to form a chapter of the Ay Cee Ell You.
They are always driven to this extreme by local pinheads who not only don’t get the Bill of Rights but are eager to trash it.
I have been called in through the American Library Association on some bizarre cases: say, the local Christian fundamentalists have decided talking animals are satanic, and consequently, they demand The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and The Wind in the Willows be removed from the town library.
—From Bill of Wrongs (with Lou Dubose, Random House, 2008)
CHEERS to happy endings. Voters in New Jersey tossed us a bit of a fright Tuesday when they nearly gave a member of The Cult the keys to the governor’s office. Happy to say the votes have been tallied and Phil Murphy has won a second term—the first Democrat to do that in over 40 years. The Cult, of course, is feeling—ironically—blue today, and to them all I can do is offer this inspiring bit of time-worn Republican wisdom:
And God Bless Us One and All.
CHEERS to sticking to your guns. Turns out “Striketober” is going to continue for 10,000 workers at John Deere (the farm implement company, not to be confused with toilet manufacturer for does and bucks Deer John). They took a vote to end their strike for better wages and working terms, and said….eh, we’re not quite there yet:
Members have demanded an end to the “two-tier” compensation system established at Deere in 1997, creating lesser health and pension benefits for new hires. They wanted to see post-1997 workers put on the same path as “legacy” employees. The contract rejected Tuesday would not have eliminated that system.
When Michael and I go on vacation, we always take two things: our Deere and the scenic route.
Many workers may also be holding out for better raises in a subsequent deal.
Also on their wish list: free use of a loaner combine for all employees when their cars are in the shop. It’s only fair.
CHEERS to #1. Here’s a little election milestone from the archives: it was 97 years ago today, back in 1924, when Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first elected woman governor in U.S. history. She ran in Wyoming in the wake of her husband, Gov. William Ross’s death from appendicitis, but was careful to avoid any public display of ambition for the job as that wouldn’t be ladylike. Her modest agenda soon mushroomed, oddly enough, into one of great ambition:
[R]equiring cities, counties, and school districts to have budgets; stronger state laws regulating banks; exploration of better ways to sell Wyoming’s heavy crude oil; earmarking some state mineral royalties for school districts; obtaining more funds for the university; improving safety for coal miners; protecting women in industrial jobs; and supporting a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would cut back on child labor.
These ideas all came from solid, Progressive thinking. But Nellie was the first governor to back them in Wyoming.
She lost her reelection, but kept plenty busy turning out the women’s vote for FDR and spending 20 years as the first woman director of the U.S. Mint. Died at 101, her life spanning presidents Grant through Carter. Currently three of our ten sitting female governors (including states and territories) are Republican. But Ross was first. And as with so many firsts in politics and civil rights, the letter next to her name was a big ol’ D.
CHEERS to a moment day of zen. Take a moment today to stop, put your brain in neutral, and take some deep cleansing breaths. Why? because November 4th is National Stress Awareness Day. Stress awareness is especially important on the road these days, I think we can all agree. To inform motorists around you who might not know this, we suggest you drive up right behind them, honk your horn several times, stick your head out the window and yell, “Hey, jerkface! If you weren’t so stupid and ignorant you might know it’s National Stress Awareness Day!” They’ll appreciate the reminder and will probably respond with a friendly wave. Thanks for doing your part. Together we can make a difference.
JEERS to little green footballs. 69 years ago this week, in 1952, Clarence Birdseye first marketed frozen peas. We hate ’em—they’re stinky, pungent and squishy—and anyone who thinks otherwise must be a socialist Marxist commie. But we’ll say this: if you’re packin’ a spoon, they make awesome catapult ammo at the Thanksgiving dinner table. (Especially if you’re sitting across from Uncle MAGA.)
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 4, 2011
JEERS to the most frightening thing you’ll read all day. When I saw this in Georgia10’s Pundit Roundup, I nearly choked on my bowl of breakfast kibble. Pamela Geller, the undisputed queen of the conservative blogosphere (sorry, Michelle Malkin, you jumped the shark when you pulled out the pom-poms), plans to follow Herman Cain all the way down the disgraced-rat hole, saying: “I endorse Herman Cain. What he doesn’t know, we’ll teach him.” Yeah, that’ll come in real handy in the Situation Room: “Sorry, General, but Ms. Geller here says the only way we’ll get Ahmadinejahd to stop calling us names is a full-scale nuclear strike. Gimme the launch codes. And you better post more guards behind the moat.” Yeah. Real handy.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to all-new adventures in the galaxy far, far away. Riding high on the coattails of The Mandalorian (which helped get the sour taste out of our mouths from the frantic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink gobbledygook that was Rise of Skywalker), the Star Wars universe is set to unveil its next episodic adventure on Disney+ next month: The Book of Boba Fett. Apparently the bounty hunter who became a fan favorite all the way back in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back has his sights set on claiming the turf once lorded over by gangster Paul LePage Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine. Very exciting, especially the casting of Temuera Morrison, who played Boba’s dad Jango Fett in the prequel movie Attack of the Clones. Here’s a look…
Perry Bacon Jr. of The Washington Post says that the voters in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey treated Tuesday night’s elections as normal even as the Republican Party is increasingly abnormal.
Both states followed the historic pattern of the president’s party in off-year elections. In heavily Democratic Fairfax County, Va., Biden won about 420,000 votes in 2020, while Trump won about 168,000. In the gubernatorial election this year, Democrat Terry McAuliffe won about 282,000 votes and Republican Glenn Youngkin about 152,000, meaning Youngkin won 90 percent of Trump’s total and McAuliffe won just 67 percent of Biden’s.
Some voters may have switched from Biden to Youngkin, but it’s unlikely the huge McAuliffe shortfall in Fairfax was just about switching. Instead, it’s clear that lots of the people who voted for Biden did not participate in this election, while a smaller percentage of Trump voters sat out. Exit polls suggest that of those who participated, 47 percent voted for Biden and 45 percent voted for Trump. This was not the same electorate that Biden won 54-44.
There is evidence of switching, too. Exit polls in Virginia suggested that 5 percent of 2020 Biden votes backed Youngkin, while just 2 percent of 2020 Trump voters supported McAuliffe. That only accounts for a few points, but McAuliffe will end up losing by 1-to-3 percentage points, so those small shifts matter.
Steve Phillips writes for The Nation that Democratic leaders ignore the politics of race at their own peril.
For more than 400 years, many white Virginians have shown that they are willing to fight, so the notion that Democrats could succeed by ignoring the battle was always fanciful and a reflection of the lack of cultural competence that continues to plague Democratic leaders and strategists. It turns out that ignoring the racism of your opponent is actually the worst possible strategy. In her 2001 book The Race Card, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg revealed how Republicans’ use of coded racial messages were less effective in swaying voters when the implicit was made explicit, finding that “when campaign discourse is clearly about race—when it is explicitly racial—it has the fewest racial consequences for white opinion.”
The problem is obviously not limited to Virginia. The people who believe that this is and should remain primarily a white nation never stopped fighting after the Civil War and have continued to fiercely resist any tentative steps toward making this nation a multiracial democracy, up to and including attacking the United States Capitol (while carrying Confederate flags) and seeking to overthrow the democratic process itself earlier this year. Since January, the white right wing has engaged in a paroxysm of democracy-destruction in states across the country, passing draconian voter suppression legislation, seeking to undermine any accountability for the January 6 insurrection, and, of course, passing laws banning the modern-day bogeyman of CRT.
For the most part, Democrats have done what McAuliffe did—ignore the attacks and hope to change the subject. Little effort and no political capital has been expended on the critical challenges of immigration reform, protecting democratic participation, and police reform. Prominent progressive strategists and writers such as David Schor and Ezra Klein have devoted copious amounts of attention to advocating for what has come to be called “popularism.” As Klein wrote in a 6000 word New York Times manifesto last month,“Democrats should do a lot of polling to figure out which of their views are popular and which are not popular, and then they should talk about the popular stuff and shut up about the unpopular stuff.”
Frida Ghitis of CNN writes that the way in which Republicans won and/or lost unexpectedly tight races Tuesday night should not bode well for the undisputed leader of the Republican Party.
Republicans have shown they can win important elections, but only if they keep the defeated former President Donald Trump at arms’ length. But how long can they do that?
The fact is, Republicans would have a good chance of winning the White House in 2024 — if they get someone other than Trump to win the nomination.
In this last election, with Trump mostly out of sight, voters were able to focus on their frustrations with President Joe Biden, and on other issues. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Republicans seemed to be saying. It worked, but the curtain is rustling; the man behind it is restless. He won’t stay hidden for long.
For now, and the foreseeable future, however, the party is wholly subservient to the man who started his term in office with his party in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and then led Republicans in a reverse trifecta, losing the White House, the House and the Senate.
Rod Watson of The Buffalo News writes about some of the reasons that the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, India Walton, lost the general election.
One definition of “conserve” is to keep what you have and avoid risk, whether it’s really working for you or not. In that sense, Buffalo is the quintessentially American city in a nation in which a truly progressive agenda can’t even make it out of a Democratic Congress even though voters love the individual parts of the package.
Against that backdrop, it’s not surprising that Walton couldn’t reproduce in the wider electorate her Democratic Primary upset, despite a platform that seemingly should have appealed to voters in a city typically ranked among the nation’s poorest.
[…]
During the general election campaign, Brown successfully changed Walton’s first name to “radical” and her middle name to “socialist.” While she talked about what she would do, he talked about what he had done and painted a frightening – often distorted – picture of the change she would usher in.
Emily Cochrane reports for The New York Times that paid family and medical leave has returned to the Build Back Better bill.
The announcement, which came as Democrats scrambled to iron out differences over the package, is unlikely to result in enactment of the leave program. Mr. Manchin, a crucial Democratic holdout, reiterated on Wednesday that he would not support it as part of the sprawling social policy, climate and tax legislation. But the inclusion of paid leave promised to give House Democrats a chance to register their support for a program that has bipartisan backing.
It also all but guaranteed that the legislation would have to be modified by the Senate and approved a second time by the House before it becomes law, breaking with Ms. Pelosi’s promise to moderate lawmakers that she would not force them to vote on a plan that could not clear the evenly divided Senate.
The speaker’s move amounted to the most direct challenge yet of Mr. Manchin, a centrist who has repeatedly voiced concern that the social safety net bill is overly generous, and whose objections have effectively compelled Democratic leaders to either curtail or remove a number of provisions.
Ian Millhiser of Vox sounds an alarm on upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases that could strike down many environmental regulations…and a few other things.
The Supreme Court announced late last week that it will hear four very similar cases — all likely to be consolidated under the name West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency — which could prove to be some of the most consequential court decisions in recent US history.
[…]
The cases are the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending litigation over the Clean Power Plan, arguably former President Barack Obama’s boldest effort to fight climate change. Though the plan was never implemented, it still exists in a zombie-like state. A federal appeals court decision revived the plan last January, but the Biden administration said in February that it would not reinstate Obama’s policy.
[…]
…At least some of the parties in the West Virginia litigation claim that it is unconstitutional for the EPA to take the sort of aggressive strides against climate change that the Obama administration took in its Clean Power Plan. This theory wouldn’t just strip the EPA of much of its power to fight climate change, it could potentially disable Congress’s ability to effectively protect the environment.
Anna Maria Barry-Jester of Kaiser Health News reports that “brain drain” has seeped into public health laboratories.
“The biggest threat to [public health labs] right now is not the next emerging pathogen,” said Donna Ferguson, director of the public health lab in Monterey County, “but labs closing due to lack of staffing.”
Across California, public health departments are losing experienced staffers to retirement, exhaustion, partisan politics and higher-paying jobs. Even before the coronavirus pandemic throttled departments, staffing numbers had shrunk with county budgets. But the decline has accelerated over the past year and a half, even as millions of dollars in federal money has poured in. Public health nurses, microbiologists, epidemiologists, health officers and other staff members who fend off infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, inspect restaurants and work to keep communities healthy are abandoning the field. It’s a problem that temporary boosts in funding can’t fix.
The brain drain is sapping community health oversight in ways big and small. The people who staff public health labs, for example, run complex tests for deadly diseases that require specialized training most commercial labs lack. While their work is largely unseen by the public, they touch almost every aspect of society. Public health labs sample shellfish to make sure it is safe for eating. They monitor drinking water and develop tests for emerging health threats such as antibiotic-resistant viruses. They also test for serious diseases, such as measles and covid. And they typically do it at a fraction of the cost of commercial labs — and faster.
Finally today, Karl Paul of the Guardian reports on a study showing that climate misinformation is increasingly rampant on Facebook.
The study analyzed 195 pages known to distribute misinformation about the climate crisis using Facebook’s analytics tool, CrowdTangle. Of those, 41 were considered “single issue” groups. With names like “Climate Change is Natural,” “Climate Change is Crap,” and “Climate Realism”, these groups primarily shared memes denying climate change exists and deriding politicians attempting to address it through legislation.
Those that were not “single issue” groups included pages from figures like the rightwing politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, which posted misleading articles and disinformation about the climate crisis.
This “rampant” spread of climate misinformation is getting substantially worse, said Sean Buchan, the researcher and partnerships manager for Stop Funding Heat, with the report finding interactions per post in its dataset have increased 76.7% in the past year.
“If it continues to increase at this rate, this can cause significant harm in the real world,” he said.
In the news today: It’s the day after an election day, which means it’s time for each of the losing sides to explain how Actually the results vindicate whatever they believed all along. Not even the infamously “centrist” Third Way is willing to buy last night’s conservative Democratic spin, though. Ohio Republicans are mimicking Texas with a new anti-abortion “bounty” plan of the sort the Supreme Court currently claims to be flummoxed by. Meanwhile, the Court contemplates loosening gun laws even further.
You may have noticed, what with the Texas attorney general being under indictment for over half a decade and counting, sitting senators dabbling in insider trading as a side gig, and a certain pumpkin-headed Dear Leader being able to incite a crowd into violent insurrection with not a single resulting consequence, that “laws” in the United States generally no longer apply to rich people, powerful people, or anyone who has the personal phone numbers of either.
It’s no longer as much of a surprise as it might have once been to learn that things we in the general public might have just assumed were blazingly illegal are—surprise!—perfectly fine, so long as it’s mostly done by people who are richer than snot.
That may be an unfair portrayal of the news from the Federal Election Commission, but that’s what we’ll go with and the immortal and all-knowing powers that be can try to talk us down if anyone even cares to bother. In a just-reported decision, the FEC concluded that there’s technically no federal law against foreign nationals (or foreign companies) pumping money into the ballot initiatives that voters are asked to vote on each election cycle.
It’s illegal for foreign nationals to donate money toward elections. It is not, concluded the FEC, illegal to dump money into ballot measures (or, by extension, congressional redistricting itself?) because ballot measures are not technically “elections.”
Sure, fine, we’ll go with that. What it means in the specific case being ruled on is that Canadian subsidiary Sandfire Resources, an offshoot of an Australian mining giant, has the go-ahead to fund committees to oppose a Montana ballot measure tightening water pollution rules regulating the mining industry. In the general case, however, it means any foreign company can fund whatever state ballot measures they like. The Post reports that only seven states currently make that illegal; everywhere else, for now, is fair game.
So, for example, a Russian state-owned oil giant might start funding ballot measures to shut down American oil companies—not because of climate concerns, heavens no! But to prop up the price of the Russian version. (Just kidding: I’m fairly certain that the 5th Circuit has ruled that opposing an oil company is a death penalty crime.)
A foreign car manufacturer might, say, spend several truckloads of money on a ballot measure allowing a state to bust whatever unions might be causing special inconvenience when the time comes to renew labor contracts. (Just kidding: Car manufacturers don’t need to spend money to bust unions; all they have to do is ask and state legislatures will rewrite laws however they need to be rewritten.)
Any world power with a bit of spare change could, for that matter, fund pro-gun, pro-militia ballot measures in all fifty states just to screw with our national security a bit more than the homegrown versions have managed. There’s a political party who’d happily help, and a whole movement of people who would take time out from their pro-revolution and anti-vaxxer podcasts to jump on that bandwagon.
The good news is that this is near-instantaneously fixable. All that needs to happen is that Congress needs to clarify existing laws to bar foreign cash from influencing any ballot measure, rather than just races for elected office. Surely, we cough, that would be a bipartisan 10-minute effort that could be done by Christmas. Similarly, each state could close the loophole itself.
It’s not that we have anything against Australian mining companies, mind you. It’s just a bit problematic if we’re going to have not just American corporations and the American ultra-wealthy but every last billionaire and for-profit company on the planet all fighting to rewrite our laws through the state ballot initiative process that’s already been largely reduced to another propaganda playground. The opportunities for mischief here are near-endless—or would be, if the “end” wasn’t the natural endpoint of the world’s richest septuagenarians turning the world’s atmosphere positively Venusian in their bid to squeeze ten more bucks out of the end of the fossil fuel era.
Seriously, could we just fix this one without drama? Looking at you, McConnell. Looking at you, Manchin.
We won! OK, so I’m not from Pittsburgh and have never even been to the city, but when I learned the news, albeit expected, that voters had elected State Rep. Ed Gainey as the first Black mayor to lead the city, it felt deeply personal.
As a child, Gainey lived in a Pittsburgh housing project. After his political ascension to the state Senate, his sister, a mother of three, was murdered in her own city. “There is a level of pain you can’t imagine,” Gainey told WPXI after her death. It’s because of those experiences, however, and his legislative background that I have no doubt Gainey will serve Black people as well as his larger constituency.
“But let me tell you why this is beautiful,” Gainey told supporters Tuesday night at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts Downtown, “because you proved that we can have a city for all. You proved that everybody can change. We know how people have talked about Pittsburgh, have talked about how siloed it is, how segregated it is. But today, you changed that.”
Pittsburgh has elected its first Black mayor, state Rep. Ed Gainey (D): “Let me tell you why this is beautiful. Because you proved that we can have a city for all.” pic.twitter.com/VhUYXsTBq6
With 96.5% of precincts reporting, Gainey won 48,430 votes, with Republican Tony Moreno, a retired Pittsburgh police officer, earning 19,552 votes, Allegheny County reported just before midnight.
Jake Wheatley, a supporter and peer of Gainey’s in the state House, told the Pittsburgh NPR station WESA Gainey’s victory says “a lot” about the coalition he was able to pull together. “He built the kind of coalition that we want the city to be. He modeled that in his campaign,” Wheatley said. “He’s always been accessible, he’s always showing up. And he doesn’t look at the things that divide us or keep us from being able to work together.” Wheatley, who’s originally from Detroit, called Gainey “a child of Pittsburgh—born, raised and educated here.”
“Coming from neighborhoods like Homewood and Lincoln-Larimer and the Hill,” Wheatley told WESA, “that will give those children an opportunity to see themselves in the mayor’s office. And he didn’t grow up with a silver spoon—he came from subsidized housing.”
Gainey grew up in the Liberty Park housing project in East Liberty and has been a resilient voice for police reform and violence prevention. His sister, Janese Jackson, was shot and killed in 2016 outside of a bar in the neighborhood of Homewood when she rejected the advances of the now-convicted murderer. She was 29 years old. Gainey said then: “I try not to focus on what could have, should have. I try to focus on what we need to do to improve the quality of life for all humanity.”
City Controller Michael Lamb told WESA that, while the city is in better financial shape—aided by some $300 million in federal COVID-19 aid—Gainey’s road to accomplishing his goals won’t be stress-free. Gainey has outlined reform priorities that include ending the use of military gear by officers, diverting resources for that gear to “investments in community policing strategies,” creating “alternative response procedures for non-violent and mental health emergency calls,” and “overhauling police training to focus on de-escalation.”
“If you want to move to a more community-based model as Ed has talked about, that to me means more police, not less,” Lamb said. “And you’re going to have a hard time getting there because you have to staff the force up” from retirements and other losses.
Gainey will also have a fight in store for him in his relationship with the nonprofit University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a “tax-exempt health care giant,” that WESA reported Gainey threatened to sue if it did not bolster financial support to the city.
He did, however, gain the support of Pennsylvania’s largest healthcare union, Services Employees International Union Healthcare. “UPMC [University of Pittsburgh Medical Center] could have given every single employee in Pittsburgh a $5/hr raise and still made $522 million last year,” the union said, retweeting a post from a facet of its Pennsylvania work, Hospital Workers Rising. “We deserve more from UPMC. Time. For. $20.”
The union said in its news release celebrating Gainey’s victory that “Tuesday’s election is an important step in building an economy and healthcare system to benefit all families.” The union added:
“For too long, poor and working class people have felt the weight of unaccountable and militarized policing, with Pittsburgh’s Black minority most harmed. The ‘eds and meds’ economy has never replaced the upward mobility of good, family supporting, union jobs of the steel era, and Black workers who are over represented in Pittsburgh’s service sector have been denied opportunity. Gentrification has forced families from the city and disproportionately harmed Black neighborhoods.”
‘Mayor-elect Gainey’s success tonight is even more poignant and important as we witness powerful ideological and corporate interests who continue to try and divide us. But instead, Mr. Gainey focused on what unites all working families: our collective demands and need for affordable healthcare, a high-quality education and investments in early learning, expanding good paying union jobs, criminal justice reform, and taking on powerful interests like UPMC and their corrosive anti-union agenda.
‘Ed Gainey’s election tonight marks a major turning point and opportunity for Pittsburgh, and our entire State. We must seize this moment and continue to center our politics on investing in working families again and tear down the walls of poverty, anti-Black racism, discrimination of all kinds, and the gross inequities within healthcare, education, and housing. It is a cause and a fight our SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania members are committed to leading.’”
The Biden administration and the state of California are working on a medium- to long-term solution to the supply chain problems affecting the nation, but in the short term—extending well into 2022—problems will persist.
President Joe Biden announced 24/7 operations at the Port of Los Angeles last month in an effort to ease backups there by moving an addition 3,500 containers a week. That was just a small part of what’s needed, and the Transportation Department has now announced plans to work with California to provide as much as $5 billion in loans to help upgrade the state’s ports, including by improving rail and road transportation options out of the ports and increasing warehouse space to prevent bottlenecks.
“Our supply-chain infrastructure is outdated,” said David Kim, the secretary of the California State Transportation Agency. “Now’s the time to modernize it and prepare our system for what will be huge growth and huge demand for years to come.”
With shortages at nearly a two-decade high, though, prices are rising and some products are becoming difficult to find. The key problem is that there’s not just one problem: Transportation, which can be partially addressed through the ports, is a problem. But so is manufacturing. So is the labor market. Different reasons for backlogs pile on top of each other, creating multiple bottlenecks.
The coronavirus pandemic is the immediate cause of many of the problems, but the underlying context is that corporations have spent decades moving to just-in-time manufacturing with as little slack as possible—which translates into a lack of the extra capacity needed to weather a pandemic.
“Look, there are so many things that are still happening in our economy – distortions, disruptions, things in our supply chain that are affecting prices that are clearly a direct consequence of the pandemic,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Fox News Sunday. “Which is why the best thing we can do for our economy in the short term, and to deal with these transitory issues, is to put the pandemic behind us.”
The current supply chain problems hit small businesses first, since they usually aren’t first in line for the most in-demand products and can’t just charter planes when container ships are in short supply. But even the biggest businesses have worries: Companies like Toyota and Nike have had to scale back production, and, Bloomberg reports, “Amazon said its entire fourth-quarter profit could be wiped out by a surge in the cost of labor and fulfillment. Apple said it lost $6 billion in sales because of inability to meet demand, and could lose more next quarter.”
While we don’t want to see early pandemic-style hoarding, this is not a bad time to do a judicious amount of stocking up on nonperishable essentials if you can afford it. But a lot of people can’t afford it—the same people who will be most hurt by rising prices. (As a reminder, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour for more than a decade.)
The trend of firsts from the last election continues: People of color are making historic wins nationwide, and by a significant margin. Securing more than 66% of the vote, Aftab Pureval was elected as Cincinnati’s mayor Tuesday. His win makes history as the first Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) to be elected the city’s mayor. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he is also the only AAPI mayor in the midwest.
“Tonight, we made history in Cincinnati,” Pureval told supporters, according to the Associated Press. “Cincinnati is a place where no matter what you look like, where you’re from, or how much money you have, if you come here and work hard you can achieve your dreams.”
Pureval, who is of South Asian Indian and Tibetan descent, defeated former congressman David Mann, who had served as the city’s mayor for nearly eight years. Mann took the defeat well and even congratulated Pureval.
“Congratulations to Aftab on his well-deserved victory. I have spoken with him and wish him nothing but the best, and it has been the honor of my lifetime to serve this community as a councilman, mayor, and member of congress throughout my career. Thank you, Cincinnati!” Mann tweeted Tuesday night.
Pureval formerly served as Hamilton County clerk of courts and campaigned with the promise to bring new ideas to city hall. He told the AP that when he decided to run for county clerk, many colleagues and fellow Democrats warned him that he did not have a “good ballot name.”
“When you see A-f-t-a-b on a yard sign, it doesn’t occur to people that’s a candidate not an insurance company,” Pureval said. “When you’re Asian, when you have an ethnic name, it’s just harder. You’ve got to be creative, you’ve got to work harder, you’ve got to knock on more doors.”
Words can’t express how honored and excited I am to be the next Mayor of Cincinnati. Tonight, we made history! Let’s get to work! https://t.co/GGoBQbZS5U
During his victory speech at Lucius Q in Pendleton, he stood by his mother and brother and told the crowd of his family’s journey to “to a place called Ohio” from New Delhi, in hopes of a better life.
“What on earth were they thinking?” he said, referring to his parents. “They came to this country to provide a better life for their sons. Because of that incredible decision, our family went from being refugees to mayor of Cincinnati.”
Pureval’s historic win is not a one-off—it comes during a time when another Asian American has just made history for being the first Asian American elected as mayor of Boston.
According to theAssociated Press, Councilor Michelle Wu became the first Asian, first woman, and first person of color to be elected as mayor of Boston. Although she follows Mayor Kim Janey, who is Black, Wu is the first to be elected; Janey was actually appointed mayor after the previous office holder, Marty Walsh, accepted a slot in the Biden administration.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. (NYSRPA) v. Bruen, which focuses on whether New York State violated plaintiffs Robert Nash and Brandon Koch’s Second Amendment rights by denying them unrestricted concealed carry permits. Lawyer Paul Clement is representing both men and the NYSRPA, which is an offshoot of the National Rifle Association.
It appears as if this time, however, Clement will score a win for his clients. Many Supreme Court Justices made no secret of the fact that they were skeptical of the New York law that only allows residents to concealed carry if they can provide “proper cause.” Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito pushed back against the requirement, with Kavanaugh at one point asking, “Why isn’t it good enough to say I live in a violent areas and I want to be able to defend myself?”
Nash and Koch are both NYSRPA members and sought concealed carry permits for the purpose of self-defense. They were issued restricted licenses allowing them to hunt and target shoot, but not to carry their weapons under any other circumstances. The two argued that their completion of firearms safety courses should allow them to carry weapons for self-defense, though a licensing officer still refused to grant them concealed carry permits.
Both men live outside of New York City in fairly rural areas, though the metropolitan city came up frequently throughout the nearly two hours of arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts insinuated that those in major cities have even more reason to be allowed to carry a weapon and mused about “how many muggings take place in a forest” as opposed to a big city. Nash, who lives upstate in Rensselaer County, previously stated that a spate of robberies was one of the reasons why he sought the permit in the first place.
While many of the justices looked to historic rulings to guide their eventual decisions, Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared willing to test just how far the Second Amendment should reach when it comes to carrying a gun outside the home. Participating via video due to a stomach bug, Gorsuch asked Clement about similar cases and how much history should weigh on a decision like this.
Gorsuch cited the last landmark SCOTUS case to do with gun control, 2008’s Columbia v. Heller, which allows for the “individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” under the Second Amendment. Clement argued earlier that the case shows how analysis of the Second Amendment has continued within a contemporary context as opposed to stopping in 1871 when the state of Texas passed a landmark law establishing guidelines for concealed carrying.
You can listen to the full oral arguments here. A decision on this case isn’t expected until next spring.
