The Best of Good News: The Biden Transition.
48 days to go.
Good News on the pandemic, because nothing happens until that happens.
It’s such a relief to have our chief executive taking the pandemic seriously instead of using the Wish Method. He’s got a plan, and it starts with putting someone in charge of everything who actually has experience.
Remember the Ebola epidemic in 2014 that infected millions? No? Well, the guy who was point on that not happening is going to be in charge again. That was Ron Klain, who Obama assigned to oversee the response to the outbreak in West Africa that had already made its way to the U.S. He’s going to be Biden’s chief of staff. Ever since the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, Klain has been advising the policy team as it put together plans on testing, contact tracing production of protective equipment and preparations to distribute a vaccine.
They have a 4-point plan to tackle this. (Wow. A plan to deal with a virus. How refreshing.)
- Managing the pandemic response is a full-time job. (Yes it is. Golf later.)
- Set appropriate expectations and then let the scientists do the talking. (Yes!)
- Hospitals need protective gear and federal support.
- A global pandemic demands a global response. (Biden is going to re-join the WHO)
“I literally sleep easier at night knowing that Ron Klain will be part of the administration’s response,” former CDC Director Tom Frieden, who worked on the Ebola response, said in an interview.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Dr. Fauci be optimistic before. I’ve highlighted my favorite part.
The nation’s top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that the U.S could have “herd immunity” to COVID-19 by the end of the summer in 2021 if Americans across the country get vaccinated against the disease.
In a Tuesday news conference with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D), Fauci predicted that high-risk groups of Americans, as well as health care workers and some others, could begin to be vaccinated this month, with inoculations continuing through March.
The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases director predicted that “the general population” will start being vaccinated in April.
“Once we get there, we can crush this outbreak, just the way we did with smallpox, with polio and with measles. So we can do it, we just need to hang together a bit longer,” Fauci said.
Good News with the economy
“We’re going to create a recovery for everybody,” Biden said. “Our message to everybody struggling right now is this: help is on the way.”
Biden’s economic team is smart, diverse, progressive and probably didn’t make large donations to the candidate in order to get the job.
Biden’s nominees have all expressed support for government spending to boost
employment, reduce inequality and help women and people of colour, disproportionately harmed by the downturn.
Biden said: “The team I’m announcing today will play a critical role in shaping our plan for action starting on day one and move fast to revive this economy.”
His “Build Back Better” plan, he said, was based on a simple proposition: “Reward hard work in America, not wealth. It’s time to invest in infrastructure, clean energy, climate change, manufacturing and so much more that will create millions of good-paying jobs. It’s time we addressed the structural inequities in our economy that this pandemic has laid bare.”
Good News on the environment
Joe Biden has appointed John Kerry as diplomatic climate envoy. Kerry will be our representative for climate issues internationally. Early this month, Biden will appoint a climate czar to ramp up action dramatically at home.
Biden has recognized that climate change is now a major issue for Democratic voters, and popular concern has grown in recent years amid relentlessly record-setting wildfires, hurricanes and extreme heat. The urgency of climate change helped drive young people in particular to turn out for Biden.
The president-elect has vowed to reinvigorate and expand the country's commitment to fighting climate change, including rejoining the Paris climate accord soon after inauguration. But that's only a first step. The Biden administration will have to do much more, on multiple fronts, to restore confidence at home and abroad, climate experts say.
The intent is to establish a “Whole-of-government” strategy. This will cause every department to think environmentally all the time. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development could make the buildings it oversees more energy efficient. The Department of Agriculture could promote soil management that sequesters carbon. The Treasury Department could do more to take climate risk into account when banks lend money.
Biden may have a recalcitrant Senate, but many of these policies can be put into place using an executive order and the same can be used to undo environmentally poor decisions from the previous administration.
Bank of America is saying it won’t finance oil and gas exploration in the Arctic following a pressure campaign from environmentalists.
The Sierra Club in recent months has put pressure on Bank of America, calling it “the only major US bank not to rule out financing for the destruction” of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) following commitments not to finance drilling there from several of its peers.
The bank’s public policy and strategy in Washington chief Larry Di Rita told Bloomberg on Monday that it won’t finance Arctic oil and gas exploration.
Bank of America’s announcement comes as the Trump administration is continuing to move toward drilling at ANWR, a controversial move because of the animal species abundant there and significance to the Gwich’in people.
AG Barr on the way out?
File this under “unfounded rumor”, but I liked it. Raw Story is speculating that Bill Barr is about to be fired because he said the election wasn’t fraudulent. (As I am typing this, Rachel Maddow is speculating the same thing). Even Chuck Schumer got in on it, according to CNN’s Manu Raju.
The NY Times right now is reporting that Trump discussed pardons for his family and Rudy G, but B Barr is noticeably not on the list, so there is that.
Flynn got a pardon, but Like everything else, they screwed it up.
They intended this pardon to be all-inclusive, but they only listed one crime on the pardon. This provides some interesting openings for Judge Sullivan. Here is Marcy Wheeler’s take: (the parentheticals are mine)
As I noted, Trump attempted to be expansive with his pardon of Mike Flynn. He failed. I think the chances that Flynn does prison time are almost as high today as they were last week.
And while I think there is absolutely nothing defective in the pardon that Trump signed and while I’m certain that Judge Sullivan will honor that pardon (though DOJ is asking him to dismiss the charges with prejudice; Sullivan should dismiss them without prejudice), there are four things that Sullivan has the means of doing to raise the cost of Trump’s pardon. Those are:
- Make Trump name Flynn’s crimes (He can subpoena Trump to ask which crimes exactly is the pardon for? Trump will resist appearing, but he will have no choice after Jan 20)
- Establish a record about whether Flynn or Sidney Powell traded electoral assistance for this pardon (that would be illegal. It wouldn’t invalidate the pardon, but it is a crime nonetheless)
- Force DOJ to explain what went into the altered documents (both the DOJ and the FBI altered documents before the court. Some attorneys’ law licenses may be at risk)
- Identify who wrote the pardon (in his confirmation hearing, (Bill Barr said that pardoning someone for giving false information would be a crime. Whoever wrote the pardon committed a crime. Find out who)
Good News Confetti — little good things just thrown out there:
Anti-Trumpers take back the American flag Politico: Joanna Weiss
I don’t know if a lot of you are like me and do not feel the reverence for the flag we once did? I no longer salute the flag at meetings, but then I can’t remember the last time I attended a meeting. Maybe it’s just as well.
But especially over the last four years, even the emblem of our country is divisive. When you see a pickup truck with a huge flag flying, you immediately say — Oh, that’s a Trumper nutcase. You aren’t alone.
But after the Biden win, a lot of us here on the left are feeling a little bit better about our flag.
Across the country, in their cautious euphoria after the election, foes of Trump have been embracing the flag in similar ways: unfurling it in front of their homes, waving it in the streets, or simply looking at it differently.
…
As Americans retreated to their corners under Trump, the stars and stripes became a casualty. In extreme cases, people rejected it altogether: La Vigne once saw a tweet that showed a Confederate flag, a Nazi flag and the American flag, with text suggesting that they all had the same meaning. More commonly, people shied away from what they feared would be an association with the wrong side. In some liberal enclaves, an entirely new set of yard signs cropped up—acting as alternatives to the flag, allowing people to proclaim their belonging to a different American tribe. In Portland, Oregon, the progressive haven where he lives, [Ben Gaskins, a political science professor at Lewis and Clark College,] sees yard signs asserting beliefs about equality and human rights, access to clean water and racial justice. They’re “a way of trying to square both sides,” Gaskins says—declaring that “I’m proud of my country, there are things that I like about it,” but also that “there are things that need to be fixed.”
The more liberals and progressives detached from the flag, the more Trump and his allies embraced it. In some circles, it became harder and harder to see the flag in a nuanced way …
“It’s been branded as a sign of the Trump supporters,” says Tom LaRussa, 67, a
retiree in Somers, Connecticut. “And it’s taken away from what I grew up with, like the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag code, all that stuff. They raised the flag on Iwo Jima and it meant freedom.”
So when he watched cable TV on the night of Biden’s victory speech, and saw Democrats joyfully embracing the flag, LaRussa felt a glimmer of hope. “People were out in the streets. They were waving the American flag,” he recalled. “And I said to my daughter, ‘It looks like the American flags are back.’”
Santa will be tracked this year just like every other year, and Santa will be there to answer phone calls too.
WASHINGTON — Children of the world can rest easy. The global pandemic won't stop them from tracking Santa Claus' progress as he delivers gifts around the globe on Christmas Eve.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command has announced that NORAD will track Santa on Dec. 24, just as it has done for 65 years. But there will be some changes: Not every child will be able to get through to a volunteer at NORAD’s call center to check on Santa’s whereabouts, as they have in years before.
Normally, 150-160 volunteers crowd into a conference room at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, taking two-hour shifts to answer the phones as eager children call to see if Santa and his sleigh have reached their rooftops. All together, 1,500 people over 20 hours have participated in the call center in the past, fielding more than 130,000 phone calls, beginning at 6 a.m. Eastern time on Christmas Eve.
As a once-a-month gnushound, this is my last post for 2020, so let me take this time to wish this annus horribilis goodbye and good riddance. Let’s all look forward to making 2021 great again M21GA! See you next year, gnusies!