Gun Violence in America

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Tuesday May 31, 2022 · 7:16 AM PDT

2022/05/31 · 07:16

A week ago today we saw the slaughter of 19 children and 2 teachers in another American classroom. 17 children were wounded, facing a lifetime of physical and emotional struggle. Anyone who has been shot knows that pain and trauma.

Since that horrific event, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, 29 more children have died at the end of a gun barrel. Congress went on vacation for Memorial Day.

I decided yesterday to compile gun violence data in America over the 8 years that the Gun Violence Archive has existed and compare those casualties to the dead and wounded American soldiers throughout the 247 years since the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Here is what I found:

Total violent casualties

In America, just part of daily life, 564,515 people have been killed or wounded by gun violence. Throughout our military history, 2,368,474 soldiers have been killed or wounded in combat. 564,515 casualties due to violence would rank as the third-highest casualty rate of the 78 conflicts in American history. Only World War II and the civil war were bloodier (and the civil war only so if you count the southern rebels)

The last 8 years on our streets would account for 24% of all combat casualties of Americans in our 247-year history of war.

Total killed

314,238 people have died of gun violence in daily life over the past 8 years in America. Throughout our 247-year military history, 664,679 died due to combat. Those 314,238 dead just in daily life in America would be the deadliest war due to combat in our history. World War II would be second with 291,557 combat dead.

The last 8 years on our streets would account for 47% of all combat deaths in our 247-year history of war.

Children

33,309 children have been victimized by gun violence. The gun violence archive did not break out dead versus injured so that is total casualties. As a total casualty count, more kids over the last 8 years have been victims of gun violence is more than American casualties in the 20 years of combat in Afghanistan. Nearly as many combat casualties in Iraq.

What can we do?

We’ve voted (Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate after Columbne and did not act), we’ve marched, we’ve called our Senators, we’ve bitched about ted cruz and his ilk, we have excoriated the NRA, we’ve had straight up protests, we’ve buried people and mourned, we’ve ignored the problem, we’ve “moved on” and congress still went on vacation 2 days after the last slaughter.

Voting is not enough

if your plan is to vote our way out of this madness just know that means at least another year of the slaughter, but in reality, Democrats aren’t gonna win the 70 or 80 Senate they seem to require to take action, so we are looking at continuing the carnage for 3 more years and probably more than 7.

General Strike IS the next option, the only option.

If you want action on this issue, meaningful and urgently taking as the situation requires, the only choice left to us is a general strike. We need a critical mass of people to just walk off the job until Congress comes back from vacation and passes meaningful gun violence reduction legislation.

What sort of demands should be made?

These are just off the top of my head, it can be tweaked, but this is the sort of thing we must do if we want to end the carnage in our streets.

Assault weapons ban
Minimum age for gun ownership set at 25.
Gun storage and security laws
Criminal liability for gun owners for any injury caused by their firearm.
A massive buyback program.
Carefully structured red flag law.
zero loophole background checks for any transfer of possession of any firearm.

This is a crisis of massive scale, and voting our way out of it means another 300,000 or more dead in the coming decade.

No one is going to save us, we must demand action now.

#GeneralStrike to #EndtheSlaughter

Salvaging American Representative Democracy

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday September 17, 2021 · 12:26 PM PDT

2021/09/17 · 12:26

It is clear, the American system is failing to meet the needs and preferences of the general population. We have of course known this for some time. Professors Martin Gilen (Princeton) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern) released a rather famous and compelling study demonstrating this reality.

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

While it is certainly open to debate whether or not it is desirable that simple majority rule is ideal or even preferable, the defeat of meaningful measures to reduce prescription costs just recently clearly indicative of the barriers to change in our system. This article gives a pretty good illustration of the problem.

Schrader and Peters are among the two biggest recent Democratic recipients of pharmaceutical industry donations, according to OpenSecrets. The pharmaceutical and health products industries are collectively the second biggest donor to both lawmakers over the course of their careers, giving them almost $1.5 million in total. Peters is currently the House’s top recipient of pharmaceutical industry donations in the 2022 election cycle.

Democrats are on the path to squander what mandate they have by ignoring the popular will of the people. This is not really about the individuals in these offices, they are simply following the incentives baked into the way our system is structured.

So how do we salvage American Representative Democracy?

Over the last few decades, a lot of talk has been bandied about regarding campaign finance reform. And from Granny D, to the death of Paul Wellstone and the Citizens United decision the issue has rotted on the vine. And while I agree that campaign finance is important, the problem with our system is more fundamental than that.

For me, the fundamental structure of our legislative branch is the problem. So over the last weekend, I ran through a thought exercise on how I would design our legislative process to make things at least more representative of the public will. The founders designed a system that was shown to be able to function for a time, but the needs of the modern world have changed, the challenges we face are radically different, so here is how, if it were up to me (yes I know this is complete fantasy), how I would structure our legislative branch.

Basic Structure of the Legislature

A two-chamber system remains appealing to me, having two bodies with slightly different perspectives and concerns. For purposes of this thought exercise, I will just keep calling them the House and the Senate.

The House will remain the more representative body. They will be elected by a smaller localized constituency as is the case today. The Senate will remain elected by a statewide vote, but it will not be set up as head-to-head first past the post elections.

Each body will have very different functions, but the basic foundation that legislation must pass both the House and the Senate would remain intact. So let's take a look at a more representative structure for these bodies, starting with the House of Representatives.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

When the constitution was first drafted the founders capped the district size at 30,000. Over time that number was made larger and larger until finally capped at its 435 member number by the Apportionment Act of 1911. At that time this cap made a lot of sense. had we not done so, given the way our legislative bodies function, we would now have Capital Stadium rather the Capital Building. Just not practical logistically.

Modern technology alleviates if not eliminates many of the barriers they faced when our form of legislative governance was established.

Given that my proposal is to return to the original vision of 1 representative for a district of no more than 30,000 elected by a majority vote of their constituents through a ranked-choice voting process. That would mean we would have 11,050 members of the House of Representatives based on the 2020 Census Data released earlier this year. I know that sounds impractical, but the members of the House would remain in their districts and not go to Washington to do their work.

I will get into the general functions of the Senate and the House later in the post. Suffice it to say that modern technology enables House members to stay in their district and still carry out voting on and even debatng legislation securely.

WHat current apportionment would look like by state

The table below shows the district size and number of Representatives by State if apportioned based on my proposal.

State	April 1, 2020	HOUSE	DISTRICT SIZE
Alabama	5,024,279	168	29,906
Alaska	733,391	25	29,336
Arizona	7,151,502	239	29,923
Arkansas	3,011,524	101	29,817
California	39,538,223	1,318	29,999
Colorado	5,773,714	193	29,916
Connecticut	3,605,944	121	29,801
Delaware	989,948	33	29,998
Florida	21,538,187	718	29,997
Georgia	10,711,908	358	29,922
Hawaii	1,455,271	49	29,699
Idaho	1,839,106	62	29,663
Illinois	12,812,508	428	29,936
Indiana	6,785,528	227	29,892
Iowa	3,190,369	107	29,817
Kansas	2,937,880	98	29,978
Kentucky	4,505,836	151	29,840
Louisiana	4,657,757	156	29,857
Maine	1,362,359	46	29,617
Maryland	6,177,224	206	29,987
Massachusetts	7,029,917	235	29,915
Michigan	10,077,331	336	29,992
Minnesota	5,706,494	191	29,877
Mississippi	2,961,279	99	29,912
Missouri	6,154,913	206	29,878
Montana	1,084,225	37	29,303
Nebraska	1,961,504	66	29,720
Nevada	3,104,614	104	29,852
New Hampshire	1,377,529	46	29,946
New Jersey	9,288,994	310	29,964
New Mexico	2,117,522	71	29,824
New York	20,201,249	674	29,972
North Carolina	10,439,388	348	29,998
North Dakota	779,094	26	29,965
Ohio	11,799,448	394	29,948
Oklahoma	3,959,353	132	29,995
Oregon	4,237,256	142	29,840
Pennsylvania	13,011,844	434	29,981
Rhode Island	1,097,379	37	29,659
South Carolina	5,118,425	171	29,932
South Dakota	886,667	30	29,556
Tennessee	6,910,840	231	29,917
Texas	29,145,505	972	29,985
Utah	3,271,616	110	29,742
Vermont	643,077	22	29,231
Virginia	8,631,393	288	29,970
Washington	7,705,281	257	29,982
West Virginia	1,793,716	60	29,895
Wisconsin	5,893,718	197	29,917
Wyoming	576,851	20	28,843
Total		11,050	29,828

Again, this seems like a lot of people, but when I get into the functions of the Senate and House it will make more sense. Before I dig into basic functions lets look at how the Senate would be structured.

The Senate

Not only do I increase the number of Senators as I did the House, but I also change how they are selected quite a bit. I feel we certainly need to abandon the two Senators per state nonsense. I do build in a slight advantage for less densely populated states, but only a slight one as you will see. Unlike House members, Senators will be selected by a statewide electoral process.

The first thing to look at is the number of Senators and how that number is determined. Later I will dig into how they are elected.

Apportionment of Senate Seats

The number of Senate seats would be based on the population size of each State. The smallest state by population, Wyoming at 576,851 people, would have 3 Senators. for every additional 576,851 people within the population of a state 1 Senator would be added. In other words, states with populations between 576,851 and 1,153,702 would also have 3 Senators, states with populations between 1,153,702 and 1,730,553 people would have 4 Senators, between 1,730,553 and 2,307,404 would have 5 and so on.

To give you a little flavor on how it would look in this model, Wyoming would have 3 Senators, Connecticut 8 Senators, Ohio 22, Texas 52, and California 70.

Based on this model we would currently have 651 Senators. A little below is a table breaking down how many we would have per state based on 2020 Census population data. I want to delve into how the Senate would be elected.

Election of the Senate

Before I get into how the Senate would be elected, I want to add that this proposal that would change terms for each elected branch of our government. Both the Senate and the Presidential election would operate on the same 5-year election cycle. House members would be elected as current, every 2 years.

The Senate elections would not be based on head-to-head majority first past the post voting. Instead, each political party would propose a slate of candidates equal to the number of Senate seats apportioned to that state. Wyoming would put 3 candidates up while California would put 70 candidate slates together. Each slate put forward by a political party would provide a rank order of the individuals put forward. For example, a 3 Senator state slate would look something like this

Senate Election Slates Sample
Democrats	Republican	3rd Party
1. Laura Jefferson	1. Bob Jones	1. Ben Green
2. Keith richards	2. Oral Roberts	2. Chelsea Liberty
3. Reggie Nighthorse	3. George Will	3. Alice Chu

The reason I align Presidential terms with Senate terms is to determine how Senators are selected. Every 5 years would be a national campaign to choose the President. This would be a simple popular vote. There would be no direct election of Senators, however. Senators would be elected based on the percent of the vote in that state for the Presidency. The Senate slates would need to be submitted in ranked order before the election occurs.

So in the model above a state could send the entire Republican slate, or the entire Democratic slate, or the entire 3rd party slate. Or they could send two from 1 party slate and one from another, or send one Senator from each party. I know clear rounding rules would be established to make this work of course including a process where 3rd party votes are split across multiple parties, but that stuff can be sorted out.

I went ahead and ran numbers by State on what representation in the Senate would look like based on the 2016 election since it had a particularly high 3rd party turnout. The table below shows the number of Senate seats by State as well as the partisan breakdown by state based on 2016 percentages.

State	SENATORS	Democrats	Republicans	3rd Party
Alabama	10	3	6	1
Alaska	3	1	2	0
Arizona	14	6	7	1
Arkansas	7	2	4	1
California	70	43	22	5
Colorado	12	6	5	1
Connecticut	8	4	3	1
Delaware	3	2	1	0
Florida	39	19	19	1
Georgia	20	9	10	1
Hawaii	4	3	1	0
Idaho	5	1	3	1
Illinois	24	14	9	1
Indiana	13	5	7	1
Iowa	7	3	4	0
Kansas	7	2	4	1
Kentucky	9	3	6	0
Louisiana	10	4	6	0
Maine	4	2	2	0
Maryland	12	7	4	1
Massachusetts	14	8	5	1
Michigan	19	9	9	1
Minnesota	11	5	5	1
Mississippi	7	3	4	0
Missouri	12	4	7	1
Montana	3	1	2	0
Nebraska	5	2	3	0
Nevada	7	3	3	1
New Hampshire	4	2	2	0
New Jersey	18	10	7	1
New Mexico	5	2	2	1
New York	37	22	13	2
North Carolina	20	9	10	1
North Dakota	3	1	2	0
Ohio	22	10	11	1
Oklahoma	8	2	5	1
Oregon	9	4	4	1
Pennsylvania	24	11	12	1
Rhode Island	3	2	1	0
South Carolina	10	4	6	0
South Dakota	3	1	2	0
Tennessee	13	4	8	1
Texas	52	23	27	2
Utah	7	2	3	2
Vermont	3	2	1	0
Virginia	16	8	7	1
Washington	15	8	5	2
West Virginia	5	1	4	0
Wisconsin	12	5	6	1
Wyoming	3	1	2	0
Totals	651	308	303	40

A majority vote would require 326 votes.

The functions of the house and the Senate

As I noted earlier the House members would not report to DC to do their work. I imagine each session would feature a massive swearing-in event in DC with all members present. Some orientation and training time and that sort of thing. Otherwise, their time is to be spent in the district. The principal focus of their work would b constituent service and outreach. Hosting things like town halls, visiting businesses, schools, healthcare facilities, non-profits, churches, and other community organizations within the district.

They can not be traditionally lobbied, however, individuals and groups physically located within the district can petition them based n their needs. Any petitioner needs to both operate or work for the business and reside within the district.

House members will vote on all legislation to be sent to the President, however, they do not draft any of the legislation. This is not to say they do not impact what legislation is considered. Members of the House can submit proposals for legislation to be drafted to the Senate if they gain the support of 5% of the total House body (553 members of the 11,050). This will enable coalitions of minority groups across multiple states to force legislation to be drafted and voted upon, while not overwhelming the Senate who holds the drafting responsibility.

Coalitions of red-state city dwellers could combine with other cities facing similar issues to advance legislation onto the agenda. If 5% of the House recommends the Senate take up a piece of legislation the Senate must draft such legislation. The legislation must be approved by a majority of the House members and must be worked on until that majority is achieved before advanced for a formal vote in both chambers.

While the House's role is public-facing, the Senate actually does the traditional drafting of legislation. The hearings, markups, and so forth. The Senate fills the traditional committee roles, the Senate conducts the oversight function of the executive.

The Senate can ONLY be lobbied by elected members of the House. No other interest group, individual, or business can lobby a Senator, they must petition house members only as described above.

The house will have no formal leadership. All members will be on equal footing. Senate leadership will be nominated by the various parties represented n the membership of the Senate, however, each leadership role will be voted on by the House of Representatives. This would apply to committee chairs on up. The parties within the Senate will be able to determine who serves on each committee themselves otherwise.

miscellaneous stuff and conclusion of this long post

One of the final elements would be to establish term limits. No one person would be allowed to serve in a federal legislative role for longer than 20 years. No one person could serve as a Senator for more than 10 of those years. That means someone could serve 20 years as a rep and no longer be eligible to run for federal legislative office, or they could be a rep for 10 years, then a Senator for 10 years. once 20 years in office have been completed they must not seek further federal legislative office. If someone serves 16 years in the House, they would no longer be eligible to run for the Senate as the term would cause them to exceed their 20-year limit.

All in all, there would be a lot more detail to be fleshed out on this sort of approach. How vetoes are overridden, how judges would be nominated and confirmed and on and on and on. But all of that can be worked out. The nut of the idea I shared here was focused on how to make our government more represented of the interests of the people than it has been before.

So what do you think?

I know this all is just a fantasy, but it is obvious our system is not working for the interests of the broad population of the country and I do think it is worth looking at different ways of doing things that will yield different results.

I fear if the system as is does not figure out how to change course the entire deal is facing collapse. Something has to give and when it does it is worth having ideas in mind about how to bring order back to the system.

“Some things are just too unjust for words, and too ambiguous for either speech or ideas."

pdxbuckeye

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Friday May 29, 2020 · 10:10 AM PDT

2020/05/29 · 10:10

Title quote written by Ralph Ellison in his work The Invisible Man. It captures this moment perfectly.

There is one simple truth this week has revealed.

If the law has no respect for the basic human dignity of all people it is not surprising people have no respect for the law.

Photo of a Minneapolis building on fire. Unable to determine attribution.

The core injustice here is the murder of George Floyd while under arrest for a crime in which he was a suspect.

But the rage and violence stems from a failed and broken system that provides no justice.

Watching the press conference in Minnesota as I type this. Multiple people have asserted that they must complete a thorough and complete investigation before the arrest of the man filmed murdering George Floyd can be effected. According to them the only way to make a lawful arrest is to have a prosecutor review every single scrap of evidence, consider all of that evidence guessing at what the defenses case just might be. Every single possible detail must be reviewed before an arrest can be made.

George Floyd was only a suspect, he was arrested and murdered on camera. No prosecutor reviewed all of the evidence in his case before the arrest and subsequent murder occurred. The person that called in the passing of the counterfeit $20 also indicated George Floyd may well have not known he passed a fake bill by the way.

In the presser reported an untold number of people were placed under arrest over the last few days related to the protests and riots that have occurred. I seriously doubt a prosecutor has considered every single factor that occurred leading to those arrests before those arrests.

Hell, the police arrested a CNN reporter on live TV. I seriously doubt a prosecutor reviewed that case before the arrest was made.

Either cops are subject to the rule of law or they are not. In this case, as in so many others, it appears clearly they are not. So while I personally do not condone rioting and looting, I totally get it.

Really what we need to acknowledge is that our nation IS a police state. Police not bound by the rule of law the citizens are bound by is a clear sign of a police state. We aren’t becoming one, we are. Police are not subject to the same laws and treatment as the citizenry. We have seen them kill time and time again with zero consequence in almost every single case. And no, getting fired is not a consequence for murder.

We certainly do not have a functioning justice system. Until we do we should expect unrest and a total lack of respect for the law.

No Justice, No Peace.

The governor of Minnesota addressed the convergence of both crises occurring right now. Now is the time to CHANGE. We can’t wait any longer.

Crisis unemployment benefits is a disaster all it's own. Up to 412,000 DENIED claims in Ohio alone.

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday May 21, 2020 · 5:57 AM PDT

2020/05/21 · 05:57

So, back when Democrats let the Republicans set the terms of the major Coronavirus bill (versions 3 and 3.5) many of us were calling for universal monthly payments. principally because this is a massive crisis and all people could use some help to keep themselves and our economy afloat.

Relief through UI “Benefits,” really?

Then we learned that most the aid to individuals was going to be focused on unemployment insurance. Ugh. If you ever had to apply for unemployment you would know it is an arcane, byzantine system mostly designed to either scare you away from accessing the benefit or just to outright deny claims because of all sorts of “requirements.”

An example is the need to have worked somewhere for 20 consecutive weeks to be fully eligible for coverage. Another is, if your employer shuts downs altogether you lose the benefit in many states. Those are just a couple of the filters they use to not provide unemployment benefits.

My brother had his hours cut in half, Ohio does provide partial, hours reduction-related benefits. He was ruled ineligible since his wife worked too basically (there is more to it than just that, its a formula). I mean it's not like they don’t rely on both their full incomes or anything like that, right?

we were fucking right about what a colossal mistake cramming aid through unemployment was.

The image at the top off this post shows the real colossal problem here in Ohio.

We have had 1.1 million people file unemployment claims since the beginning of the crisis.

92% of the claims have FINALLY been processed. That comes to 1,012,000 roughly (since the 1.1 million number provided by the state is assuredly a rounded figure). I put FINALLY because people surviving paycheck to paycheck that filed in the first two weeks waited 4 to 5 weeks for their claims to be processed. Imagine the late fees they racked up in that time, it’s expensive being poor.

Ohio has processed 92% of those claims, sounds great right, but notice that around 600k claims paid. That means 412,000 claims have been denied (a point of pride for our unemployment office has been the “all claims approved paid immediately” status, the problem has been the length of time it has taken to approve the claim, again people are already living paycheck to paycheck piling on late fees and penalties all the while).

412,000 people were denied relief benefits though. Just in Ohio.

ScreenShot2020-05-21at9.29.59AM.png — Unemployment Claims status after processing in Ohio.

Ok, some of those denials might have been people eligible for the new PUA (Pandemic Employment Assistance) which adds self-employed and other miscellaneous contract works eligibility.

So assuming all those numbers were part of the denial pot, that still means 251,000 people have been denied access to the primary assistance meant to help people through this crisis. Now, I think that pre-registration number marks a shift in policy, where those people don’t have to get denied unemployment first (like they had to before the policy shift), so that number of people that have been denied relief benefits could be up to 359,000 people denied aid in the middle of a global pandemic where the economy is crashing around all of our ears.

at best a quarter million people have been denied relief in ohio

ScreenShot2020-05-21at9.29.08AM.png — Total POTENTIAL approvals and denials in Ohio. Of course this assumes all 161,000 PUA claims approved. I seriously seriously seriously doubt that will happen. Probably has a similar denial rate of the above standard unemployment rate is my guess.

Yep, that is just in Ohio, who, while largely a Republican state now, tends to have somewhat generous safety nets compared to other red states.

So, running aid through unemployment has resulted in about 25% of the people seeking needed hep being denied that aid. That does not even consider people that don’t bother to apply even though they might be eligible and otherwise need the help. My guess, and it is just a guess, that’s probably a good 100,000 people or so at least.

if pandemic relief is the goal this approach has been a failure

That is a failed approach by definition. Sure, most people were helped, but 25% denial is terrible for those human beings, trying to feed their kids, keep a roof over their head and you no exist in relative safety if possible. All that denied in a global pandemic.

The insanity of means-testing people to death in normal times drives me up the wall. To do it in the middle of a cascading calamity is mindboggling to me. I mean I get the Republican impulse to means-test people to death, but all I have heard Democratic leadership say is how great it is they have run this through unemployment as well.

I know a quarter of a million people in Ohio who would disagree. I join them in their discontent.

Katy Tur's expression says it all

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday May 12, 2020 · 12:18 PM PDT

2020/05/12 · 12:18

Just flipped over to MSNBC for a hot minute because game show network running the god awful Match Game reruns from the 70s.

She had Senator Mike Braun (R-Indiana) on. She asked a pretty basic question about whether Mike thought this crisis exposed the holes in the social safety net.

I usually am doing something else when MSBC is on (I take care of mom fulltime, she is 80 and has dementia, but she hates the Match Game while liking the game show network otherwise). But his response caused me to look up from what I was doing.

He agreed with Katy, it has exposed the problems with the social safety net. I was shocked to hear a Republican agree, it caught my attention. I had a millisecond of hope.

Then, he kept talking. He began opining about Social Security and Medicare, and how its been a problem for years and no one has had the political will to do anything about it. He couched it in the usual Republican euphemisms for cutting benefits of both programs and even launched into the “solvency issue”.

My millisecond of hope was dashed about as fast as I figured it would be. In the end, Katy Tur’s expression said it all.

I needed a good laugh, and the look of confused disgust on Katy’s face provided it. I mean it is the only appropriate response.

But Seriously though

Republicans are not good-faith actors.

Republicans are going to pursue their agenda through this crisis. Democrats have to understand this. I fear it is too late since they have given everything Republicans wanted in response to this crisis already while getting very little of what wanted along the way.

I hope whatever this big bill is today can get through, I just don’t see it happening. Republicans drafted the first BIG bills (3 and 3.5 or whatever) and they will bank on that being the credit they need. Now they will block bills with stuff we want because they can and it will make us look bad. They used the early fright to get the megacorp money shovel set up with our acquiessence, now the shock level is down we are going to have to fight tooth and nail to get a tiny fraction of what we want for the American people.

Giving Republicans everything they wanted by letting them draft those bills was insane. I am hope I am wrong, and the things needing to pass in this next house bill somehow passes in the Senate, but I very seriously doubt it. Republicans goal is to destroy governing capacity, it is the root of their ideology. this crisis prevents an opportunity for them to make big gains on that front. And by giving them the political cover by letting them draft the first big bills without much of what we wanted while they got everything they wanted, we have given them political cover.

COVID19 appears to be partisan too.

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 21, 2020 · 7:12 AM PDT

2020/04/21 · 07:12

I track daily the Covid numbers out of morbid personal interest. Recently I started running some simple data and began to notice an unsurprising phenomenon (it ought to be surprising but I am not surprised I wasn’t surprised).

Basically, the counts appear to be partisan. Maybe the vrus just behaves differently in Red States? But anyway, I just looked at the confirmed death count per total confirmed cases from the Johns Hopkins Coronavrus Dashboard.

What I noticed was once you do that a pattern emerges. States with Republican Governors seem to much better death per confirmed case rates.

The median number of deaths per case is 27. Arizona and Mississippi both come in at the median number. The numbers below the median means the more deaths per confirmed case and the higher number the fewer deaths per case.

Here is how it breaks out:

Higher than the Median R	18
Higher than the Median D	7
Median R	2
Median D	0
Lower than the Median R	7
Lower than the Median D	16

Now I know red states have a different population density in many cases and so forth that could explain some of this. Climate may or may not have an impact (although wouldn’t that have more impact on spread and less on death per confirmed case).

That said, states with like characteristics, but with Governors of different parties you see them on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Kentucky v Tennessee are geographically similar, both have two modest urban centers and yet Kentucky, with a Dem Governor, shows a death per case rate well below the median while Tennessee, with a Rep Governor, comes in high above the median. Kansas (D Governor) and Nebraska (R Governor) as well reside on opposite ends of the spectrum.

On the population density front, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina all have major population centers, and yet all are above the median.

Now I know counting deaths is a lagging indicator, and I know states are struggling to get counts from nursing homes and other things, but, everyone is suffering from the same strain on that front to a certain degree. You can argue that the amount of testing in each state could impact that as well, but testing per capita is all over the map no matter what end of the spectrum you look at (the green line on the graphic).

This tells me there is likely some other factor at play here, probably something partisan in nature.

Shifting our messaging and policy framework to win back voters we lost in 2016 during this crisis

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday April 16, 2020 · 9:02 AM PDT

2020/04/16 · 09:02

I have been watching a bit of MSNBC in the last few days. Saw Claire McCaskill, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg on their air in that timeframe. It was interesting looking at through the lens of the political divide on the left. Before I dig into what I heard from them that prompted me to write this diary, a little look back at the political situation that got Trump elected in the first place and a key observation between the Bernie traunch and the rest of the Democrats.

One narrative coming out of 2016

I know one of the key narratives coming out of 2016 largely remain Bernie supporters cost Clinton that election. It just is not true. Maybe the typical rate of supporters of the losing candidate not supporting the nominee could have made the difference, but counting on more than 75% of a primary losers supporters to back the eventual nominee is just unrealistic. It just doesn’t happen. Didn’t happen in 08 (25% of Clinton support went to McCain), in 04 (22% of Deans support went Bush). Only 12% of Bernie voters in the primary went to Trump, another 12% didn’t vote or went 3rd party (mostly to Johnson not Stein by the way. The idea that Greens would otherwise vote for Democrats at all is absurd, most of them are extremely anti-war and they view Democrats as a war party, we are never getting that vote, at least with the candidates the party seems to prefer to put up).

What happened in 2016

I know Clinton handily beat Trump with voters earning less than $50,000 overall, even in the states that flipped to Trump. That said, Clinton lost the support of 1.3 million voters earning less than $50,000 in the states that flipped left us between 2012 and 2016. In most of those states those voters did not flip to Trump either.

In Ohio, more than 400,000 voters earning less than $50,000 stopped voting for us. Trump lost ground with this group compared to Romney too. Here is a chart showing the vote change by vote level to visualize what happened in Ohio.

The problem was not just constrained to white working-class voters (another narrative that came out of 2016), it cut across racial lines as well.

While about 350,000 white people fled our banner in Ohio alone, Ohio is an 82% white state, so the 100,000+ black votes that dropped out of supporting us make up 22% of our lost vote by race even though blacks are only 13% of the population. Rich white people made up most of Trump's growth with white people in Ohio in the end. Gotta get those tax cuts. But Trump also got more black vote than Romney as well. Not many, but still he grew that group while we lost significant ground.

Again, this is not the only state that flipped that showed similar losses with this critical core of people who did use to vote for us. Here is a summary of the 1.3 million people earning less than $50,000 in the states that flipped:

Key differences between Bernie and his surrogates and Clinton and her surrogates

Now, it is not as if Clinton did not understand she had a problem here and that these voters were unhappy going into the campaign. It is just the way these issues were addressed, which she and her campaign rightly identified as important, was pretty tone-deaf. Here is what I mean.

Bernie and his surrogates talked about a failing system causing the 40 years of wage stagnation we have seen for the bottom half of wage earners in this country. I imagine Clinton recognized this too, but, as near as I can tell, they felt they had to thread the needle not to offend Obama adherents, so they did this sort of ‘economy is on the right track, I know your wages suck’ dance that just did not connect. I imagine people whose wages suck (people without degrees were earning less than they were in 2007 by 2016) will never agree that things are on the right track.

They look at anyone making that claim as just out of touch with reality. I get why Clinton felt she had to walk that line, but it probably hurt her with this group that the bottom fell out within the states that flipped.

The most used talking point during the campaign is one that many folks did not see as a difference between what Bernie and his surrogates would say versus what Clinton and her surrogates would say.

Clinton first this time. I can quote this word for word because she and her surrogates said it so often. “I know people feel left behind.”

Bernie’s team also made a similar argument over and over and over again. “I know people have been left behind.”

That one-word difference is the key between the difference in thinking of the campaigns and those that supported them. Saying ‘feel’ is read by people as if what they are experiencing is sort of just in their head. The system works and either you are just imagining the pain and struggle in your life, or you are just a loser experiencing what you deserve somehow. “Have” places the problem at the feet of the system, it does not blame the voter for their experience and how they feel about it. Sure its sort of a subtle difference, but messaging is important and I am dead certain it had an impact given the above data.

It certainly defined the policy distinctions between the two candidates.

So what am I hearing today that need to be fixed on how Democrats message

First off, Claire McCaskill, I think on Lawrence last night, made a key point that delineates the thinking between the Bernie supporters and how mainstream Democrats look at some issues. She basically argued that we need to work to get more people coverage for the healthcare they need. Bernie folks, and people struggling to keep, find or get the healthcare their family needs hear “we can’t cover everyone” when they hear that sort of case being made.

What is appealing about how Bernie addresses the issue is that it is plain as day, he wants to make sure every human being in our country can simply get the healthcare they need. No cost barriers at all. If you are not feeling well, call a doctor. You do not need to decide if you can afford the copay or deductible first or not call at all because you are one of the 10 million people Joe’s team admits his proposals would leave out.

In this time of crisis, if you want to be seen as responsive to the human tragedy unfolding in this country, you need to present an inclusive message in the form of the policy you are promoting, we want to serve everyone to meet their needs.

Joe on Morning Joe. Joe was pretty good this morning. For Bernie supporters, his bit about a leader needing to “take responsibility” rings a little hollow. They view Joe as extremely problematic on that front, and they won’t be the only ones. Just one example. Student debt is such a crushing crisis is because student loan debt is just an anchor that can’t be discharged through bankruptcy because of the bankruptcy bill Joe pushed.

Sure Joe issued a new plan to “ease the burden” of student loan debt by discharging tuition related debt, as if wanting a roof over your head and food to eat while you went to school is just unforgivable or something. He needs to own the mistake of the bankruptcy bill completely and put forward a real proposal to alleviate the ongoing crisis it has caused.

A big hurdle to overcome if you want to keep disaffected Bernie people on board, is that they sort of view Joe as the arsonist that lit most of the fires we as a country must now put out. Figuring out a way to talk about these issues to convince them and the people that abandoned us between 2012 and 2016 that Joe has put down the matches and will be the firefighter.

If you have ever been in a home the day after a fire, you know what that's like. Firefighters take no chances, they address the problem of the fire by total saturation. They don’t just spray a little water on it, they drench it, they pull down the ceiling and insulation and drench it to. The house must be rebuilt to recover from a fire. Sure some things can be salvaged, but the structure largely must be replaced to become a safe home again.

Work, healthcare, racial, social, environmental and economic justice hell our society, in general, all require that treatment. Quench the fire completely, pull down the ceiling and drench that too then rebuild the structure of all the institutions that impact these things. Sure some things can be salvaged, but a significant rebuild is in order. If you just spray a little water on it while maintaining the basic structure it just means the embers in the ceiling will burn the house to the ground eventually. We must avoid that at all costs.

I am not trying to tear down Joe with these observations or comments. I want him to win since it looks like he will be our nominee, but these messaging nuances and policy frameworks must be addressed or he will have a harder time winning. People are fed up with the way things were, this crisis has only revealed the dysfunction of our system in even starker terms. If we go into the fall not addressing the systemic problems created by 4 decades of failed policy we will struggle to win. Our chances of victory are better now with Joe since Trump is proving to be the debacle we all imagined he would be in a crisis, but a win is not yet certain.

Pete Buttigieg actually addressed this well after Joe was on. We can no longer ignore the existing disparities our system has created. “We can’t go back,” he said. He basically argued we must choose a different path. Joe needs to abandon his return to normalcy pitch, listen to Pete, listen to the Bernie wing, pay attention to the data that shows the massive flight of voters earning less than $50,000 in 2016. We must change the system coming out of this crisis. The veil has been pulled away from millions of people's eyes. Even Joe was talking about it this way this morning. I mean he couched it as if he already believed it, but now voters see it for what it is for the first time.

In the spirit of unity I will roll with that assessment, but if Joe believes the veil has finally been ripped away from peoples eyes, now is the time to propose the big structural change this country needs. It is time to end the ideology and policy-making process that allows only legislation that profits some corporations with lobbying power to pass, but focus on policies defined and set by the goal of the policy to serve people first. Legislation should not be required to be hostile to corporate interests, but it must stop being defined by it.

Systemic Failure in the time of Coronavirus

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday April 15, 2020 · 6:50 AM PDT

2020/04/15 · 06:50

A global pandemic has ground much of this nation to a halt. It is human nature to want to find someone to blame. Without a doubt Trump bears a great deal of blame for the extreme level of our inability to respond to this crisis adequately. That said, we are facing massive problems that would put us behind the eight ball no matter who the President was. It does not matter how good they were in responding to this from the beginning, our systems across the board would still have failed us.

Trade and manufacturing policy

We can’t produce enough cotton swabs on the end of a stick. While President Trump absolutely should have fully enacted the DPA to centralize production and distribution of needed supplies and materials, it remains, even had he done so, manufacturers in this country do not have the capacity or the supply chains any longer to transition to the production of cotton swabs on the end of a stick.

That is a result of decades of gutting our manufacturing sector through a trade policy which hollowed out much of our middle class these last 30 years. The impact of that goes well beyond the economic harm done to a huge segment of the working population but has rendered us incapable of responding to this crisis in the timely ramp-up of production this situation requires.

Our failing healthcare system

While the Democratic Party seems dead set on maintaining a for-profit healthcare system, it is failing right in front of our eyes. PPE shortages are a tiny example of why. Hospitals, like most large business, is largely run by financial engineers. The consequences of that are myriad. Here are a few:

Just in time inventory — Storage rooms cost money. To the mind of a financial engineer they are a waste of money. That’s why so many hospital systems ran out of PPE in the first week of facing this crisis. We have seen the pictures of nurses in garbage bags. We have seen the pictures of janitorial staff cleaning rooms with even less protection than that. It is shameful in this country that we are so willing to risk the lives of our caregivers, all so someone can make money off of our HEALTH.

It also explains the massive shortage of hospital beds we are seeing across the country. Also, a for-profit system sees zero value in providing healthcare to massive swaths of rural America so many people can’t get the care they need in a non-pandemic world. Now it's only worse. I mean, we have non-governmental global humanitarian organizations that formed to support healthcare in underserved areas around the globe, that discovered the regions of greatest needs are right here in the United States. The richest nation in the history of the world.

It is a failing system that must be replaced.

None of that factors in lack of healthcare coverage even

Now, with probably 22 million people losing their jobs in the last month, a great many of them now lost their healthcare coverage. I know they get a special enrollment period in Obamacare. Many of them were living paycheck to paycheck, they have no income, they can’t even get through to unemployment offices to file for benefits and no Obamacare plan starts coverage until they get that first premium payment. Even then, most of them have copays and deductibles that renders even going to the doctor unaffordable, even if you are paying that premium. Particularly when you have zero income and need to house and feed a family.

I mean the entire notion that losing your job due to the massive public health crisis this pandemic presents also means you lose your access to healthcare is just fucking obscene. Lowering the Medicare age to 60 ain’t gonna fix that. Expanding the options of insurance to pay for with high copays and deductibles is unworkable. I just imagine that family where one spouse works, the other stays home with the kids. Suddenly the working spouse gets laid off. Spends weeks trying to file for unemployment benefits unsuccessfully, then the spouse that was working contracts Covid19 and dies. What the hell does that surviving spouse due to surviving in the middle of a global pandemic? There is no real relief coming because most of it was channeled through unemployment systems. They have lost their spouse, they lost their access to most of the relief money, they have to pay rent, utilities, buy food and even if they manage to do all of that, they then receive a $50,000 plus hospital bill for their dead spouse a month later. It’s obscene.

I mean, it sounds nice when all the politicians SAY no one should be billed for coronavirus care, but words are wind. Even if Congress passes legislation forcing insurance to cover COVID care, what if that spouse became critically ill from something else and needed that hospital care and then died. I guarantee that is happening too. That spouse, with almost no access to relief, will still get that massive hospital bill. It’s obscene.

That does not even factor that COVID death rates will decline while flu diagnosis skyrockets I bet. Since the insurer can’t profit off of covid care the incentives will become to misclassify diagnosis. Because someone MUST profit off of our healthcare needs.

Food insecurity

The level of food insecurity in this country was staggering before COVID, it is cataclysmic now. It’s only going to get worse. Foodnamk lines around the country are miles long. Foodbanks do not have the capacity t distribute food to that many people, so you can wait for hours and hours and get know food and end up going back tomorrow to try again.

Meanwhile, farmers that supply restaurants and schools and so on our plowing fields under to keep them from rotting on the vine and starting a plague of locusts or some other pest. This is a supply chain problem. I get it. This one in large part is on Trump, this could and should be the use of the DPA as well. Bring in military logistics teams to move that product to where it needs to be and get it distributed. They could do it through existing foodbanks by providing significant temporary refrigeration capacity or set up community food distribution centers at schools to reduce the massive lines at food banks.

But this is not all on Trump. Since he is not acting, Congress should be. This problem is an emergency, and if it persists for a few weeks more we are looking at darker times. Looting and rioting will become part of the story. For the life of me I don’t understand why I don’t see Congress in Washington (since they did not set up any capacity to legislate without being in Washington) passing legislation to fund food distribution on a massive scale right this moment. Waiting to may 4 might mean billions of tons of food plowed under. It does not grow back over night. Preserving that food source and getting it distributed should have been a top priority. Food will become the next toilet paper shortage if we are not careful.

Unemployment insurance is not relief

A recurring universal benefit would have been the efficient answer to providing relief. Unemployment insurance is designed to be a difficult and demeaning process. It is designed to screen people out as well. Millions of people will be denied unemployment because of arcane and byzantine processes and rules that were not removed in the relief legislation. Giving eligible people an additional $600 is nice and will help a lot of people, maybe most that go through the process and get the benefits. But in most states, if you have only worked someplace for 19 weeks, you will not be eligible for benefits. If you did not earn an average of $275 per week, even if you were working, you don’t get any benefit.

Millions of people who need more help because of this global pandemic will not get it as a result of running this mostly through the unemployment system.

None of this even considers the systemic racism and increased impacts on marginalized populations. I can’t even imagine what this crisis is doing to their lives.

Trump is a massive disaster, particularly in this crisis, but he is not the only story of failure. Our systems are failing us across the board.

So what exactly constitutes a f#@king emergency?

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 14, 2020 · 5:16 AM PDT

2020/04/14 · 05:16

DEmocratic house majority leader steny hoyer released this floor update:

Members are advised that absent an emergency, the House is not expected to meet prior to Monday, May 4, 2020.

People, after just 3 weeks, are now in food bank lines that look like this:

And this:

All while farmers are plowing crops under because of “supply chains”

Relief money is run through a system designed to screen people out.

Here is an example:

You earned enough money and worked enough weeks in your base period to qualify for benefits. To qualify, you must have worked at least 20 weeks during your base period. Your employment must be “covered” employment, meaning that your employer pays Ohio unemployment insurance. Not all work is considered covered employment and may be a reason why you will not qualify for benefits.

In addition, you must have an average weekly wage of at least $247 during your base period for each week you worked. To find out your average weekly wage, divide your total amount of wages during your base period by the total number of qualifying weeks.

Imagine the horror of being a spouse that was not working, staying at home with a child, your working spouse gets laid off, spends weeks trying to file on an overwhelmed system, they contract a severe case of Covid and dies. Where is your relief money coming from then?

PPE shortages only seem to be less of a problem

Listening to Cuomo was enlightening today. We all know we are suffering massive shortages on PPE. He is pretty cagey, as is any hospital administrator interviewed if you listen closely. Pretty much Cuomo said they call each major hospital system daily for supply updates, and that they all report they have what they need “based on the new guidelines” which I bet involve using PPE not in the safest possible way because of shortages. He said something along the lines of “administrators say they are doing fine, you may hear something from an employee about shortages, but no one is reporting shortages given the new guidelines”

So really the PPE shortage is still an ongoing crisis, But not the only shortage.

The state of trade policy and manufacturing in this country is so terrible we can’t even produce enough swabs of cotton on the end of a stick to do the widespread testing we need to do to even contemplate reopening. That shortage persists.

Then there are the reports of FEMA giving supplies to private companies, many times after taking an expected order from a State, to distribute at significant mark ups. Those companies are just providing those supplies to existing customers, not where they are needed.

And then there is this

And then there is this making everything above worse by the day.

So what the fuck constitutes an “emergency” if none of that shit does?

We are literally means testing people to death in the middle of a global pandemic.

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday April 09, 2020 · 12:33 PM PDT

2020/04/09 · 12:33

trump sucks, he is an awful human being

Just watching the Ohio daily presser listening to a protestor screaming in the background while the Lt Governor talks about how hard they are working to SCREEN unemployment benefits according to the law. He reassures all of them if you are eligible, you will get all of your benefits from the initial date of application, not when t finally gets processed.

He is whining about how overwhelmed the system is, and he is not happy with how slowly the money is getting out but. those that are deemed eligible, will get all of it eventually.

People have not been able to feed their kids for a week or more BECAUSE OF THIS CRISIS already. schools are handing out 2 meals during work week, but nothing for weekends. Frankly, adults need to eat too, and they can’t even feed themselves right now as well. And unless we want the protests to grow to exacerbate this crisis we must take a different tack moving forward.

Oh, after some reporter questions he noted that he got a text from the jobs and family services that all APPROVED claims are paid, no backlog on approved claims. Meaning ALL of the slow payment is because they are on a person by person basis trying to decide eligibility in the middle of a global pandemic with thousands dying daily from it.

UNIVERSAL BENEFITS ARE THE ANSWER IN THIS CRISIs

Tying most of the direct relief to unemployment has been a mistake. It is taking too long.

Many of us called for a universal benefit to get money out quickly. No screening, no means testing just get it out the door now. My line was Rents due in two weeks, then a week. Well, now the rent is past due and the state has spent probably MORE MONEY beefing up the SCREENING SYSTEM for unemployment than they have actually gotten out the door.

Here is an idea I pitched a few weeks ago that I think Democrats must look at (well the must part is a universal benefit, my idea goes beyond that). Deciding who does not qualify for help is slowing down the system and people very likely will die because of it. Universal programs are what this crisis calls for, we can decide wh should be left out of future programs later.

So here was my idea a few weeks back, we still need to do it or some routine monthly benefit throughout the crisis.

I don’t understand the obsession with trying to fucking decide who isn’t going to get the help they need in this crisis. If you “target” or “means test” that means people that need the backup support WILL NOT GET IT. That is unavoidable.

This is one of the problems with Obamacare. If you earn $28,999 you were eligible for a subsidy. If you earned $29,001, you were not. Your situation is not any different, but one gets support and one doesn’t. There are two problems with this:

People that need help will not get it.
Those people just on the outside will probably never fucking vote for you again if they survive this crisis. Maybe that’s the calculation, they are more likely to die, so losing that vote is less of a problem? At least they are less likely to complain about what we did if they are dead? I really do not understand the thinking here.

OK, I might be over the top on bullet 2, but dammit people need help now and rent is due in a week.

I am no bond expert, but it occurred to me a way to approach this might be structured this way.

ISSUE EVERY PERSON A $2,000 TREASURY BOND MONTHLY FOR THE DURATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY.

You may think that seems like a lot, but the median rent in the United States 2 years ago was $1,025. So Romney’s $1,000 is not adequate unless they manage to do something to require employers to keep paying people.

WAIVE ALL PENALTIES IF HE BOND IS CASHED DURING THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY.

Obviously, this plan would make no sense if there was a massive penalty for cashing out a 30-year bond next week. But the advantage here is if you don’t cash it during the national emergency you end up with a retirement asset and the government has cash on hand to rebuild after the crisis.

I AM NO EXPERT HERE

This hair-brained idea may not make any sense in the real world. I only have a rudimentary understanding of how bonds really work. Anyone that knows any better I would love to hear what you have to say below. I have already written my congressperson and Senators with this idea, doubting that they will read it, but I think this is an idea worth looking into.

Trump's failing Coronavirus response. Running public health for-profit or "like a business."

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 03, 2020 · 8:46 AM PDT

2020/04/03 · 08:46

This is getting people killed right now.

Why are we failing

It’s simple, we believe everything, including public goods like healthcare, must be run like a business. I worked for a non-profit for 12 years and I came to realize we were hamstrung in our ability to really impact our community in any profound way because we were sacrificing too much on the altar of efficiency. I mean, we did some good, no doubt, but we could never achieve significant impacts because of these efficiency constraints placed on us by our “business leader” board.

Our response to this Coronavirus public health crisis is rooted in precisely this same problem. Financial engineers running everything make decisions that are now putting healthcare workers and hospital staff at risk needlessly. Here in Ohio 18% of our positive test results are healthcare or hospital workers.

Here is an interesting article from Global Biodefense from last November. I found it after I typed this post and was looking for an image for the header. There’s No Such Thing as Just-in-Time Healthcare and Public Health Preparedness

PPE Supply shortages are the hallmark of this crisis

There are lots of reasons for those shortages. Here is the top two in my mind:

Offshoring manufacturing capacity. The first thing China did when they acknowledged they belatedly acknowledged the crisis was to order all PPE manufacturers to stop the international distribution of their products. Then, since most of the world's PPE happened to be produced in Hubei Province, as they shut things down there the international supply chain froze up. I have a friend who is a doctor and she started pointing to this supply problem immediately back in January.
Profit centered hospitals, or non-profits run like a business, run by financial engineers, rather than public health officials or doctors squeeze every penny out of the system they can. So they adopt just in time inventory practices because storage space costs money. So what stockpiles of PPE they had were designed to cover a few weeks of a crisis, but not much more than that. Their staff are now at extreme risk, sacrificed on the altar of business efficiency.

Sure Trump and his “private-public” partnership nonsense (and it is nonsense even when Democrats say it, which they have been saying it for decades now, its the party ideology now in fact) leading to his refusal to fully implement the Defense Production Act has hamstrung or ability to respond. But those two big problems listed above are the systemic problems we are facing right now.

PUBLIC GOODS should be run to meet the public need

This goes for all public goods. The profit motive should not be a part of administering public programs and goods. Besides, privatizing the provision of public goods costs taxpayers more while the frontline workers delivering the goods or services end up getting paid less with worse benefits. This is true in private prisons, private motor vehicle administrative centers, and on and on and on. We spend more, those actually doing the work on our behalf get paid less.

We need to drop this obsession with the public-private partnership when designing public systems. If a private partnership might work for a particular thing, let's go for it I guess, but, as our governmental departments have shrunk or remained frozen staff wise, and more public goods have been shoveled to private administration our costs have skyrocketed, enriching shareholders and reducing pay for those actually providing the service.

It does not work, and seeing what is happening to our public health system at the VERY FRONT END of this crisis should provide all the proof of that fact any of us should need.

Recover. Reimagine. Rebuild. Critical Worker Shortages as Millions Lose Their Jobs.

pdxbuckeye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday April 02, 2020 · 12:41 PM PDT

2020/04/02 · 12:41

Many of us on the left and the blue hats were crying out for a universal monthly payment to get people through this crisis. Running this through the normal broken unemployment system would be a disaster. This is proving to be true.

Ohio Governor DeWine’s Daily Covid19 Press Conference

Watching the Ohio Governors daily coronavirus briefing today highlights the issue.

They announced a new online job board where grocery chains and gig delivery companies largely have posted approaching 12,000 essential jobs they can’t fill. An overwhelming majority of those jobs are for wages you yourself can’t pay rent and eat on, let alone pay for utilities or to take care of families.

Anyway, a reporter chimed in that he knew people that looked at those jobs wanting to pitch in, but they pay too little to get rid of their unemployment benefit. So now, we have a huge job need going unfilled, for services most of us need, but those jobs are not being filled because people are afraid to lose their coming benefits.

And they are right. I know, jobs should not be paying so little that people won’t take the work, employers should just raise the wages. But then you get into skyrocketing prices at a time when everyone is trying to be frugal. The system we operate normally is broken, but it is the system we have.

Drop Means testing, embrace universal programs

We must drop our modern obsession with means-testing every damned thing. Universal programs eliminate these kinds of issues.

If everyone was just getting a set amount per month, and I mean everyone, then as the states start showing needs people can go and fill that work for extra income, helping to meet a seriously critical worker need to confront this crisis and taking better care of their family.

More needs will arise as this crisis unfolds, and too many people, protecting the well being of their families, will hesitate to get involved for fear of losing the means-tested benefits as we have set them up.

We have pursued policies for decades now as a country that has created nothing more than a treadmill economy. Most of us have been losing economic stability year after year. People have been crying out for change to this broken system and always get told to shut up, we can’t do that, be pragmatic.

Enough

This crisis has proven the system we have been operating is a complete and utter failure. We aren’t even lasting two weeks without massive massive problems.

We must begin to approach major issues in our society with universal approaches so we can be flexible as crisis after crisis will beset us. Climate change catastrophes are coming, we know they are. Hopefully, this is a wake-up call.

Universal Basic Income is something we must consider. Medicaid for All, Universal college education, universal childcare and on and on and on all need to be considered

Basically trying to make the system we have been using work we are hamstringing our ability to be nimble and flexible enough to respond to this crisis and it is a crying ass shame, to be honest. “Pragmatic” means testing, (I actually call it mean testing cause the first guy ruled out by that $1 is not really in any different situation than the person qualifying for the benefit), is going to be the death of us, beyond those that have been means-tested to death through denial of affordable access to medical care already.

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