Clashing Political Realities in the US Senate

In the Senate hearing of Amy Coney Barrett yesterday two of the Senators used some of their time to paint two radically different political realities. Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) described what one can call hell, while republican Ted Cruz (Texas) also painted a vision of hell. The two visions were shocking and utterly partisan but probably mostly factually true. If one ignores the partisanship, the two hells merge into one to some extent.

The two sides made each other look bad at best and at worst, something akin to horrendous or deeply immoral and deceptive. How politics is working today seems to describe what people call making sausage. Who knows what all is going into the grinder, but we do know that one thing that is going in is hundreds of millions of dark money dollars from people who want to radically remake American law and society. The two visions of political hell are described below. Are they fundamentally the same or different? Is the logic of one vision more flawed than the other, or are they both about the same in their validity and soundness? Is the legality of all of this something to be concerned about? Do both sides equally respect facts, true truths and sound reasoning?

Whitehouse

Cruz describes hell at ~7:00 to 13:20

At ~21:00 to 23:53, Whitehouse discusses 80 5-4 decisions that have come out of the Roberts court. All of them were straight party line votes in favor of the republican position. In all 80 cases, the republican donor interest won at the Supreme Court. Does that cast the comments that Cruz made in his attack on the staggering amount of dark money going to democrats in a different light, or does that make no significant difference? It also raises the question of why so much corporate dark money is flowing to democrats in this election. What is going on here?

Herd immunity would save more lives than strict COVID-19 lockdown, study says

Sweeping lockdowns across the U.K. may could lead to more COVID-19 deaths and a prolonging of the pandemic than if the government were to let herd immunity build up in young populations, a new study suggests.

Researchers published a reanalysis of data modelling the British government used as guidance for instituting blanket lockdowns and social distancing measures in March, at the beginning of the pandemic.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal last Wednesday, suggest that while strict public health measures bring cases down, in the long run, the number of deaths rise.

‘Short-term gain, long-term pain’

In one simulation, the researchers ran a model that showed lockdowns, social distancing of those over age 70, and quarantining the sick all significantly stunted the spread of the virus in a first wave. However, when those measures are scaled back, infection rates bound upwards, especially in young people, and push the model into a deadlier second wave.

In that deadlier second wave, young people, who are less susceptible to dying from COVID-19, had helped spread the virus to older populations, who subsequently saw higher rates of death.

The authors described the model as a postponement of the pandemic.

In a different model, where lockdowns are removed and younger people are allowed to go to school and work, while those above age 70 are made to social distance and stay put, the models show significantly less deaths.

“Lockdown does mean that the number of deaths goes down, so there is a short-term gain, but it leads to long-term pain,” the lead author Graem Ackland, a computer simulation professor at the University of Edinburgh told The Telegraph .

“If you had done nothing, it would all be over by now. It would have been absolutely horrendous but it would be over. It wouldn’t even have been completely lunatic to do nothing.”

In the study, the authors suggest that rather than sweeping lockdowns and generalized social distancing, young people should be allowed to go to school while older groups are made to quarantine. This would allow young people to build up a herd immunity while also protecting the most vulnerable populations.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/herd-immunity-would-save-more-lives-than-strict-covid-19-lockdown-study-says/ar-BB19YAVG?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout

 

The Republican Supreme Court Ends the Census Early

Dictators thru the centuries

The US supreme court has just ruled that the president can end consensus counting early. That has been a major conservative goal in its attempt to not count minorities and illegal residents. NPR reports:

“The Trump administration can end counting for the 2020 census after the Supreme Court approved a request for now to suspend a lower court order that extended the count's schedule.

The high court's ruling, following an emergency request the Justice Department made last week, is the latest turn in a roller coaster of a legal fight over the timeline for the count.

Last-minute changes by the Census Bureau and its skirting of an earlier court order for the count have left local communities and the bureau's workers across the U.S. unsure of how much longer they can take part in a national head count already upended by the coronavirus pandemic.

Lower courts previously ordered the administration to keep counting through Oct. 31, reverting to an extended schedule that Trump officials had first proposed in April in response to delays caused by the pandemic and then abruptly decided to abandon in July.  

More time, judges have ruled, would give the bureau a better chance of getting an accurate and complete count of the country's residents, which is used to determine how political representation and federal funding are distributed among the states over the next decade. 

Despite the Constitution's requirement to include the "whole number of persons in each state" and the president's limited authority over the census, Trump wants to try to exclude unauthorized immigrants from those numbers. That effort has sparked another legal fight that is also before the Supreme Court.”

The point is obvious: Conservative republicans and probably bigoted or racist authoritarian religious and business interests want to limit counting of minorities. The logic is that by undercounting all US residents, that will favor republicans. For the GOP leadership and Trump, this is about the exercise of power, not democratic governance.

Wealth inequality... it’s a growing problem

While there are community safety net programs (band-aids) put in place for most every country out there, we witness the wealth schism continuing to grow between the world’s very rich and very poor.  Finding that elusive/collective “happy medium” tends to get harder to achieve with each passing year.

As most of us would agree, fixes only happen when root causes are identified and successfully addressed.  So, for example… 

The cause of being poor is usually the result of conditions like: being under-educated, feelings of hopelessness (e.g., being poorly-connected, family cycle of poverty), and negative soft-wiring (e.g., abusive upbringing).

The cause of being rich is usually the result of conditions like: a higher education, opportunities (e.g., being well-connected, family inheritance money), and positive soft-wiring (e.g., nurtured upbringing). 

While these contrary conditions are not set in stone, I believe they are more true than not.

Granted, no one answer can fix the world, but left to our own devices, our baser, more primal instincts tend to rule us (e.g., greed, selfishness, fear, self-preservation).  With that intro, now for the question: 

If you agree that wealth inequality is a problem, should there be additional policies put in place to resolve the gap between the rich and the poor?  For example, government subsidized higher education and universal health care, to name two fixes.  (Yes, that would mean proportionally higher taxes.)

1. I completely agree
2. I somewhat agree
3. I’m neutral
4. I somewhat disagree
5. I completely disagree

Identify the country from which you hail, and then explain your answer.

Thanks for participating and recommending.