Joe Biden wants to get this done!
President Biden announced a raft of new private sector initiatives on Wednesday to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, as his administration increasingly looks to outside partners to help meet its goal of 70 percent of adult Americans with at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine by the Fourth of July.
Declaring June as a “national month of action,” the administration wants to incentivize Americans who are hesitant about getting vaccinated with a range of perks, including free food delivery, baseball tickets, Xboxes and chances to win cruise tickets, groceries for a year and free airline flights.
The White House also announced the launch a handful of community-based outreach initiatives, including blanketing local media, providing colleges with resources and launching an effort to recruit 1,000 Black-owned barbershops and beauty salons across the country.
Key Points:
- Making it easier than ever to get vaccinated. Walk up vaccinations, mostly within 5 miles of your house.
- Extended hours in the month of June, many open 24 hours on any Friday.
- Kindercare, the YMCA and other places will offer free drop-in childcare while parents are getting vaccinated.
- Uber and Lyft offering free rides for vaccinations.
- Re-launch a national vaccination tour across the south and the midwest, spearheaded by Kamala Harris, and joined by Jill and Doug.
- Shots at the shop. Barbershops, beauty shops. Local barbers and stylists.
- This weekend – a national canvassing weekend with volunteers knocking on doors, encouraging people to get vaccinated.
- City vaccination challenge – which city can grow vaccinations fastest by July 4.
- Increasing work with employers to host on-site vaccination clinics, get paid time off to get the shot and paid time off for side effects
- Basketball, hockey, baseball, even racetracks are involved
- Asking everyone to help get our friends, families and co-workers vaccinated. Talk about why you got the shot. Help them find a vaccination location. Offer a ride.
- Encouraging with incentives and fun rewards, including free beer.
My favorite part started with this: “Young people, listen up.”
What were your favorite parts?
TaMara (HFG)
I think the barber shops idea is brilliant.
guachi
It’s amazing what a competent government that genuinely cares looks like.
Baud
No vaccines in cereal boxes? It’s like he’s not even trying.
Baud
@guachi:
Truth. It took a lot of unheralded work to make this a reality.
WaterGirl
@Baud: They need pictures of athletes and other famous people on cereal boxes – getting the vaccine!
Imagine how cereal sales would go up if Dolly Parton’s picture was on the box! :-)
zhena gogolia
I’m already worrying about how they’re going to do the boosters.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: If he really wanted me to get a vaccine he would cancel student loan debt and sign a M4A executive order. And declare the chair where the mitten man sat a national monument.
-signed tantrum throwing BS brat with a rose emoji in the Twitter handle
taumaturgo
Biden is desperate to get this done also. There is precedent for this type of negotiating skills, the Covid-19 relief checks that started at $2,000 and turned into $1,400. 2022 midterm is looking uglier and uglier.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden offered to scrap his proposed corporate tax hike during negotiations with Republicans on an infrastructure package, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, in what would be a major concession by the Democratic president as he works to hammer out a deal.
Biden offered to drop plans to hike corporate tax rates as high as 28%, and set a minimum tax rate that companies should pay instead at 15%, sources said.
In return, Republicans would have to agree to at least $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending, one source said.
Biden originally proposed an infrastructure package that would cost $2.25 trillion.
(Reporting by Jarrett Renfrew and Davide Shephardson; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Heather Timmons; Editing by Susan Heavey and Jonathan Oatis)
Jeffro
@guachi: I know, right?
the former guy would still be putzing around on the golf course, saying it’s up to the states and if “people don’ wanna get the shot they don’t hafta “ and leaving it at that.
JPL
@taumaturgo: This is when the republicans walk away and complain about Biden’s unwillingness to negotiate.
Mudbrush
When are we going to do the the blow gun darts tipped with vaccine? I’ve got good lung capacity!
Kay
@taumaturgo:
This is one I think he should get done even with compromise. No one will know or remember the original figure (which was deliberately high anyway, anticipating a counter) and a trillion in infrastructure will take an already humming economy and stretch that out for months and years.
Take the money. Are you insane? Of course take it.
Kay
@taumaturgo:
Every single one of those infrastructure jobs will ripple right into the “real” economy. People need to see what he’s doing. They’ll like it. They already like it.
They are not going to let it stall. I agree. Keep moving.
Omnes Omnibus
@taumaturgo:
Still on the new math thing? No surprise.
Baud
@taumaturgo:
The checks were never going to be for $2000. I know you are a bad faith commenter but misinformation isn’t going to be tolerated here.
Fair Economist
So many great ideas here, it’s hard to pick one out. I’d pick “shots at the shop” because almost everybody gets haircuts.
Kay
@taumaturgo:
You can’t complain people don’t start high enough in a negotiation and then complain when they start high and move down. Your whole fucking genius strategy was “start higher and end higher”. That’s what’s happening here. If it was really “I will hold you to the higher number and anything less is a failure” that’s a different demand.
Subsole
@taumaturgo:
I’m really sorry that Biden robbed you of your chance to sit there saying “tolja you shoulda voted Bernie, you uppity little *clang*s.”
That must really, really suck for you, not being able to watch them make the world suffer for rejecting your selfish little stumblefooted screwup of a messiah again.
dmsilev
I still think arming Amazon delivery drones with dart guns is the right approach.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Thanks. I have no time for this any more.
Baud
@Kay:
Watch them.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Also, barbers and hairstylists spent so much of the pandemic basically shut down, and were hit so hard as a result–and their path to winning back their full pre-pandemic clientele is to get them vaccinated. So the incentive is there. Same reason amusement parks were so eager to become mass-vaccination sites.
Matt McIrvin
Like I said: workplace clinics were what got me to start getting my flu shot every year (after one terrible season of disease at the office).
Joe Falco
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, if you’re going to bring up the student loan forgiveness proposal, it’s only fair to mention that we’re still waiting on the memo Biden asked the Education Department to prepare examining his legal authority to wipe out student debt through executive action (link). It would be nice if the president could do it or if it was somehow possible to make those vaccinate or already vaccinated eligible to have whatever student debt they gave forgiven or reduced as an enticement. But everything Biden laid out in his speech are good and productive steps and way more than what would have been done if TFG was still president.
Baud
?
germy
@Kay:
I agree, take the money.
But what I don’t understand is, if they lower the wealth tax rate, we won’t be able to pay for the stuff we want.
smith
@Baud: was wondering when that shoe was going to drop.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Screw the half loaf, a full loaf of bread or nothing! //
West of the Cascades
@taumaturgo: I realize you don’t comment in good faith, but even your bad-faith argument here ignores that Congress could (1) pass $1 trillion worth of infrastructure in a negotiated bipartisan bill and then turn around and (2) pass $1.25 trillion more (for “non-traditional infrastructure”) through reconciliation.
dmsilev
@Baud: “We sentence you to being shipped parcel post from Nome to Key West. And back again.”
Kay
@germy:
I think he started higher there than he needed also. I agree though- it’s important. I just feel some sense of urgency because what absolutely destroyed Democrats in the 2010 midterms was the lag in the economy. Biden sees the error and is not going to make it again. You can’t tell “normies” to wait. They’re loosely attached – they don’t follow along. He has to keep pushing money down and infrastructure is an excellent way to do that, and good on its own merits. It’ll pay now and for decades after. He cannot let it go.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
“Witch hunt!11!”
-Fox News probably
Baud
@germy:
The counterproposal isn’t to lower the tax rate. It’s to leave the rate as is but create a corporate minimum tax. I don’t know the details beyond that.
ETA:
Baud
@Kay:
The post article I linked to above says he wants to sign it this summer.
dmsilev
Florida Man accused of killing iguana uses ‘stand your ground’ defense to try to get charge dropped
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
The one thing I worry about in that regard is the inflation we’re seeing. It’s because of the pandemic forcing the economy to shut down, but I really hope it doesn’t continue into 2022 and Biden’s stimulus policies get blamed for it. The Fed last I read seems to think it’s transitory, but companies like Costco disagree
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
A growing economy always has some inflation.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Good to hear. Fire DeJoy (into space).
Ken
“Not that we’re still angry about the dead chicks.”
Subsole
@dmsilev:
Huh. You’d think the land of the alligator would be okay with SYG vs lizards…
Ninedragonspot
My favorite part: the administration is also releasing some 25 million doses (Astra-Zeneca, I presume) to other countries. 25 million doses is a drop in the bucket compared to the magnitude of the challenge in vaccinating the world, but it’s an important first step. US vaccine diplomacy has so far been suboptimal. A larger tranche of doses will be distributed through COVAX by the end of the month.
William D
perhaps a new thread on “I helped X get the shot”….stories of persuading cajoling bribing facilitating our friends etc to get the darn shot……might require new stickers
Ken
@dmsilev: As a sentencing alternative, he could be locked in a cell to “stand his ground” for a day with a selection of Florida’s other reptiles.
(To clarify, I mean alligators, not the Florida GQP.)
Ruckus
@Subsole:
I have him pied, for the concept that you stated, wasting everyone’s time with his BS.
My comment is thanking you for your comment.
Joe Falco
@dmsilev:
Ah, the Nermal route.
gene108
So, Biden’s creating a private-public partnership to leverage corporations existing customer base to multiply government coercion to establish a new paradigm in synergizing a path for future architected public-private partnerships to extend coercive government tactics from our X-box’s to our barbershops.
Sounds perfectly innocent to me.
dmsilev
@Subsole: The 2nd Amendment notes the right to arm bears, but says nothing about reptiles.
taumaturgo
@JPL: GQP has zero intention of voting for anything the democrats propose walking away would be inconsequential.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Also a certain amount of inflation is necessary for a growing economy.
StringOnAStick
@taumaturgo: This is called performative negotiation; Biden knows the R’s are never going to vote for this so he’s making a good show of “hey, I tried to meet them halfway, but …” . Seriously, do you pay any attention at all to how this works?
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
The other side of the coin. The point being, of course, that inflation is not and should not be scary per se. The big fear of inflation seems to come from two things: first, the stagflation of the ’70, and, second, residual fears of hyperinflation. Neither are a danger at the moment.
Omnes Omnibus
@StringOnAStick:
Your question was rhetorical, right?
gene108
@taumaturgo:
Devil will be in the details of the latter part, but creating a minimum corporate income tax could be better than raising the top rate.
Companies pay less in taxes on income reported on financial statements, because of timing differences in recognizing income and expenses between the tax code and GAAP. A higher top rate does not alter this, but a minimum tax rate may.
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
Or a brick wall would work. And not pollute space.
Of all the crap SFB pulled, and it was all crap, nojoy was up there towards the top. Mostly his crap was doing nothing positive for anyone but himself but nojoy did serious damage to a lot of people and to a necessary part of daily life. Of course it has had some positive effects and that is my junk mail volume is down a lot.
H.E.Wolf
He’s white. He doesn’t have to. ;-)
Cermet
@taumaturgo: They don’t have to vote for it – all they have to do is allow closure; then vote against it but since dem’s have a break-the-tie-vote, it passes the next round. I’d be perfectly fine with that and even allow the thugs that made the closure vote possible to take credit for its passing (in the later vote they voted against.)
RaflW
One of the key messages has to be “The vaccine is totally free. No copay. No out of pocket. No surprises.” There is at the very least anecdata that people think there’s hidden costs or copays or their insurance co will find a way to screw them (I wonder why!?).
We also have to pay for people’s sick time if they miss a day of work. Many who aren’t vaccinated now are ppl with shit benefits — or none at all — and bad bosses.
A friend is a pediatrician, an inlaw of his specifically said to him she’s been holding off because she can’t afford to miss a day of work (to which he said in an aside to me, “I’m not sure why she can’t get the shot on a Friday” but that’s still an incomplete response if we want to make it easy and affordable).
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Ummm…….
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
mrmoshpotato
@Joe Falco:
The world’s cuuuuuuutest kitty cat!
mrmoshpotato
ROASTED!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: Cloture.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
Damn. That’s cold.
gene108
@Kay:
Getting Republican Senators to vote for infrastructure spending could reduce the likelihood of Republican governors rejecting the infrastructure money, like they did with ARRA funds in 2009 and 2010, and some are doing now with the additional $300/week in unemployment benefits.
jl
Thanks for the good news. I don’t have a problem with cash and other prizes for getting vaccine, but it is not enough, and from what I see in the news, state health departments, once again, overmatched and have lost institutional knowledge or resources to do what was routine SOP public health work 70 to 40 years ago. But it looks like Biden administration has what it takes. I still don’t see the role that the US Public Health Service used to play in logistics and support that the US used to have. If anyone of the BJ expert knowledge data base can provide info on that, I’d appreciate it.
California overall is looking in good shape, from what I can tell from state and county damned ‘dashboards’, which don’t provide the most relevant information very often. From what I see, California has 60 percent coverage for first shot, and 45 percent fully vaccinated. SF Bay Area is higher. So I think vaccination plus immunity from infection puts SF Bay Area very close to the herd immunity threshold, and lower than average prevalence of active cases circulating in the community, far closer than most places to no local circulating disease herd immunity steady state. The difference between to the two is that after you reach the threshold, the stock of infectious cases circulating in the community has to burn out, to use the fire metaphor for spread of infectious disease. And, BTW, media explanation of this is very confusing and inconsistent, but I think it is simple if explained. Like, the fire department stopped the spread of the fire, but some buildings are still going to burn.
taumaturgo
@JPL: GPQ already walked away. They won’t agree to raise corporation taxes nor they would agree on raising the debt ceiling. Biden is stuck with the filibuster on one side and a wall of intractable obstruction on the other.
germy
germy
@gene108:
Republican senators like it both ways.
They vote against infrastructure and funding projects, and then when the shovels and checks arrive, they stand there grinning and take credit.
germy
Is Tony Jay here? He might like this one:
Cheryl Rofer
The New Mexico vaccine lottery is for everyone who’s gotten a vaccine in New Mexico. I signed up
ETA the link: https://vax2themaxnm.org/sweepstakes/
Soprano2
It also creates a huge amount of jobs for people who don’t have college degrees, and it creates “manly” jobs. One gripe I’ve heard a lot about the programs Democrats promote jobs-wise is that they create “girly” jobs that men don’t want and aren’t proud to have. It seems silly to me, but a lot of people feel this way, so let’s create jobs they can’t say that about!
taumaturgo
@West of the Cascades: Wishful thinking at best. You do realize that the opposition has told the Democrats more than once and very clearly to go fly a kite since they have zero interest in voting to approve anything proposed by Democrats. Exemptions for a tax cut for the rich. abortion restrictions, and gay discrimination legislation notwithstanding.
gene108
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
There’s actual inflation, where the cost to produce goods increases because demand is high, versus commodity price increases that are driven by supply chain problems caused by the pandemic.
I think we’re experiencing the latter now.
The former happens, when inputs to produce goods, like wages, increase so production costs make supplying goods uneconomical at the level of demand the economy reaches.
Caveat, I’ve had a few entry level economics courses, so I’m no expert. This, I think is the gist of what I learned.
catclub
Old people with money fear inflation. They remember the 1923 German hyperinflation, but have no problem with the 1933 47% unemployment that got them Hitler. Tell me when the WS,J and the old rich people they write for, is worried about unemployment.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, sure. It’s just a bunch of news articles I’ve read have been making a big deal out of it. I guess it just for clicks and there’s nothing there?
Soprano2
My niece-in-law didn’t know this! I told her “It’s absolutely free, the only reason they would ask for your insurance information is so they can bill your insurance company, which will pay the whole bill”. I’ve had people tell me they freaked out a little bit when they were asked for their insurance information, and I can’t blame them. Too many people have been screwed by health insurance too often to not be suspicious of something being promoted as being free.
gene108
@Cermet:
IIRC, that’s basically how the Senate operated pre-2009.
Mary G
@Kay: I know, it’s called politics. Anyone who can’t see that $1 trillion plus a 5% increase in the capital gains tax is a massive win is an idiot I thought I had pied.
Also, too the Republicans won’t take it and will have further pressure on them by showing once again how intransigent they are, and it may move Manchin and Sinema. Probably not Sinema, Manchin is a superb pol and she acts like the Russians have something on her she’s desperate to hide.
Edited multiple times for multiple error. A guy in my bathroom is running very loud tools and scrambling my brains.
gvg
@Omnes Omnibus: uhh…a lot of people fear inflation because they live paycheck to paycheck or on a minimal fixed income. Every little cost hurts the poor. I know SS usually adjusts for inflation, but that is AFTER the bills, and private pensions generally don’t. Wages too will have to go up eventually but won’t right now.
Also people mostly don’t understand economics. that is also why they fixate on a balanced budget and compare it to a household budget.
Soprano2
I get this, but so many states have had such a problem with infrastructure repairs that I doubt many of them would reject the money out of hand. MO just passed a phased-in increase in the gas tax to help pay for some road and bridge improvements, and that was a heavy lift for the Republican state legislature even though the need is huge. I think they would be happy to take federal money to do this stuff so they didn’t have to pay for it.
stacib
@William D: We, my mother and I, tried really hard to get a neighbor to get the shot. We even set up her appointment. At the required time, the neighbor bailed because something, something. Now, she’s been in the hospital since last Monday with Covid.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I get paid in Zimbabwe dollars so I am hypersensitive to hyperinflation
jl
Put my money down, and do some predictions and risk eating a lot of crow later. I hope BillinGlendale comes by and takes note so he can give me shit later on.
First, I think for many of the regions with higher immunization rates, the steady state version of herd immunity, with no sustained circulating disease in the community will be definitely reached within a month or two.
Second, about half of the country has a better shot at that over the next approximately four months than is often reported in the news.
From what I read from infectious disease docs who really understand the immune system, more and more evidence coming in that both vaccine and disease induced immunity strong enough to put off need for booster shots for at least a few years.
Also, more evidence coming in that for kids under 12, that group’ natural R0 << 1, that is it, that demographic can’t support sustained transmission within itself. If so, disease in that groups should follow adult decline in cases in areas with high transmission, you won’t see surges in that demo except in areas where there are surges in unvaccinated adult cases. So, young kids have never been important vectors of disease, rather they have been harassed and bothered by cases imported from adults. Supporting this is that evidence coming in that problems with increased cases from some school opening were due to surges in more mixing among adult parents and staff, not the kids themselves. BTW, evidence for this goes back almost a year from public health dept studies in Australia, Norway, Taiwan and Denmark, but the US was too snooty to bother take seriously because… I dunno.
The R0 among kids under 12 is critical in determining whether the talk about herd immunity is out of reach is too pessimistic or not, so what is going on in kids should be watched closely.
All of course, IMHO.
taumaturgo
@Kay: Maybe you have a point. The GQP figured out Biden’s negotiating against himself, as he has already offered several reductions. Any wise negotiator would be smart to string out the negotiations to see how low the other side will go. In this case, the GQP could gain no corporate tax increase and pay by divesting allocated Covid-19 funds and zero new investments. This would be good?
Haydnseek
@germy: Clicked on this and glad I did. I took Gerald Locklin’s modern lit class. He introduced me to Bukowski before a reading he and some other profs in the dept. sponsored. He literally changed my life, and in a very good way. By the bye, I agree 100% with the Bukowski quote. I haven’t always lived that way, but I do now and find that it suits me much better.
jeffreyw
Relevant to our interests:
germy
@Haydnseek:
I always enjoy reading the letters of note tweets.
I remember back before the internet, I’d read “the collected letters” of this or that favorite author. I don’t know why I find them so fascinating.
taumaturgo
@gene108: Agree but only if 100% of the corporate deductions are eliminated, otherwise this could be a new corporate tax giveaway. Good luck seeking approval from McConnell.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: GA is proud of its being lumped in the bottom ten, so no incentives for us.
gene108
@Soprano2:
I think it depends what the state level Republicans marching orders are from the billionaires, and higher ups in the party.
Christie turned down funds for a much needed train tunnel under the Hudson River, in 2009. Rick Scott, as governor, turned down money for a light rail project.
The basic well being of their state’s citizens is not a pressing concern of the modern Republican Party. In 2011, as ARRA funds to states ran out, and Republicans in charge, a whole bunch of state and local government employees got laid off, because tax cuts for rich folks were more important than keeping a teacher from losing a job.
Outside of Corbett, in PA, all the Tea Party governors got re-elected.
If state officials marching orders are to destroy their states for Republicans to retake the House and Srnate, they will go along.
taumaturgo
@StringOnAStick: Of course, the difference is that when the disparate points are connected a pattern emerges that shines a light on the idiocy of negotiating with those who refuse to do it in faith. Are the Democrats holding their ground, or negotiating from weakness?
jl
@jl: Forgot: what will happen is that in high immunization regions, and many large metros, covid will become isolated outbreaks imported from regions with lower immunization rates. These outbreaks will soon become like measles, mumps, bacterial meningitis outbreaks, and slowly fade in the news. I think will happen sometime in summer. Edit: well, won’t fade in the news for far longer time… and at least in CA and SF Bay, may produce some overly costly over stringent partial shutdowns, since that is the one and only thing that public health is able to do around here. Much good came from that early in epidemic, but going forward, they need to adapt.
Where? New England, Middle Atlantic, Pacific, sane states in East North Central, MN.
Maybe we need to cordon off West and East South Central.
Anyway, I sure do hope promising news on duration of immunity and low R0 among kids < 12 holds up.
Also, we’ll have de facto equivalent of vaccine passports, since that is what has happened in previous epidemics, going back to Yellow Fever in early US. So, I think should be some formal program for people who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons, so they aren’t discriminated in areas with herd immunity steady state.
Subsole
@Ruckus: I should just go ahead and pie them as well. Life is way too short.
If I were a socialist, I would be very, very angry at Bernie for putting THAT nonsense front and center in my movement instead of stomping on it hard when he had the chance.
Dude probably locked them out of power for a decade with his sore-loser garbage.
KithKanan
@germy: At the local level too. My eyes were rolling so hard the season when my R State Assemblyman was claiming credit for all the great projects the CA Gas Tax increase was bringing to our area out of one side of his mouth while actively campaigning for the referendum attempting to repeal it from the other.
Subsole
@mrmoshpotato:
My mill brings ALL the gentlefolk to the yard…
sdhays
@gene108: I think you have a better grasp of economics than most people paid millions of dollars to flap their jaws about it on the teevee.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: We need a pediatric vaccine. I’m guessing the dose will be smaller, maybe much smaller since kids seem to have a far stronger immune response to the spike. But there will probably be a lot of resistance since the risk to children from the virus is lower.
The Northeast will probably have a few nearly disease-free months in the summer and then we’ll see isolated outbreaks and maybe even semi-shutdowns in the fall. A lot depends on how long immunity from the existing vaccines lasts. I’m guessing that from the mRNA vaccines, for most people, it will actually be longer than the more pessimistic estimates, maybe much longer. But they might want to give out booster shots just to get better protection against the later variants.
Subsole
@Steve in the ATL:
That’s nothing.
Go read about Zaire in the early 90s.
The exchange rate was like 10 million (yes, million) Z to the dollar. Mobutu’s government was handing out actual million dollar bills.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@catclub: It’s not about the folk that remember German hyperinflation, it’s the folk that remember the 70’s here.
jonas
@taumaturgo: If what this means is that companies would get a lower official tax rate, but actually have to pay it (as opposed to using all sorts of loopholes and write-downs to make their obscene profits disappear on paper), that may actually be a good thing.
jonas
@jl: If outbreaks are limited in a way where the infected person and their contacts can be effectively traced and quarantined, then it’s not such a big deal. It’s when you get to the point where public health authorities are overwhelmed with cases and can’t do effective contact tracing that your outbreaks start getting out of control and you have to employ more drastic measures, like lockdowns.
Anoniminous
@dmsilev:
So in Florida it’s OK to murder blacks for no particular reason but not lizards
That kinda figures
rikyrah
History lesson. Good thread
.KEPT THE FAITH, BABY! ¡SI SE PUEDE! (@JamesMWilliam18) tweeted at 7:38 AM on Thu, Jun 03, 2021:
#OnThisDay 1949 Wesley A. Brown became the first Black person to graduate from the United States Naval Academy.
Who was Wesley A. Brown? Glad you asked. https://t.co/rynHtHRSCa
(https://twitter.com/JamesMWilliam18/status/1400431624060293120?s=03)
taumaturgo
@jonas: This is what I wrote in another post:
Wapiti
Regarding barbershops and shots – I got my hair cut Tuesday by my regular barber. I got 3 cuts in the interim from a different shop, but my guy is pushing 70 and his wife had cancer, so he closed up in March of 2020.
On Sunday I was on that side of town for the first time in a year, and saw his barber pole thing turning as we drove past, so I checked online and made an appointment. He told me Tuesday that it was his first day back and he had left the barber pole going the entire time. It was good to see him – and get my hair cut right.
Kay
@gene108:
I personally think infrastructure is different. Republicans want it. It’s fine to say they don’t operate in good faith, they don’t, but this they want, unlike health care or unemployment benefits.
Our negotiations with them are really bad because we start at a place where we’re saying “you should want this!” and Republicans… don’t. They don’t now and never wanted a national health care plan. That was really the stumbling block to our “plan” :)
patrick II
@Baud:
My hope is they put DeJoy in a vice and get him to talk about his appointment as postmaster general and under whose guidance it was that he deliberately damaged the post office’s on-time delivery record just before an election.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gene108:
Thanks for the explanation!
germy
Tears on my pillow
James E Powell
@Haydnseek:
Which Bukowski quote?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
BTW what do you think of that Ohio voting “reform” bill that formalizes that counties can only have 1 drop box and IIRC places restrictions on early in-person voting by removing a day before Election Day. I think it’s bullshit and one of the Republican co-sponsors was a condescending ass about it. Wish I could remember his name.
Steve in the ATL
@germy: to which Dominion and Smartmatic lawyers say “bring it on, fat boy!”
At least, that’s what I say in these situations.
catclub
@Steve in the ATL: They’ll knock the stuffing out of his case.
Catherine D.
It’s been weird wearing masks less. I still wear them in public areas at Cornell, though I don’t have to, and always in stores. But it’s nice to ditch them in the office or lab.
germy
@patrick II:
Dejoy can lie all he wants. I think it’s the current and former employees who’ll do him in.
Uncle Cosmo
Just FTR, this “VidCrunch” entity that’s spammed a continually annoying window in the sidebar that can’t be stopped, shrunk, scrolled away from, or closed, can fuck right off and die – right after “TraumaTurdo”.
Gravenstone
@germy: Idiot with too much money doesn’t know when to stop digging. Film at 11.
Geminid
@KithKanan: These days, talking out of both sides of one’s mouth is an essential skill for a Republican politician. The Republican candidate for Virginia Governor is putting on a clinic in talking out of both sides of his mouth.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not expert on that. If the optimistic view on R0 among the under 12 demo is correct, which I think evidence increasingly supports, then early childhood immunization isn’t needed for herd immunity if we can keep adult immunization rates up to snuff. But how promising is that? Very hard to get kids going to residential colleges to get vaccinated for bacterial meningitis.
But, if safety issues can be ironed out, I think early childhood vaccination for covid is justifiable. We have early childhood immunization for rubella, which I don’t think is a serious childhood problem (BJ experts correct me if I’m wrong), but rather for kids of pregnant women who get it.
I hope the myocarditis issue can be solved by postponing the second shot. Or, that the long term protection offered by J&J turns out to be almost as good as the two shot vaccines. Remember J&J protection is commonly underestimated because they used the very shortest follow-up time to show adequate minimum efficacy. Evidence is coming in that full protection from J&J takes a month to six weeks to develop, and may rival that of the most effective vaccines. Check Monica Gandhi’s twitter, which has links to charts on that.
Mary G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Inflation is frightening, and can be harmful to olds like me on a semi-fixed income. Contrary to that, I started a job at my not-so-giant and not-so-evil corporation in Sept. 1980 and had my first performance review at six months, where I got a perfect score and a raise of 19%! A couple of years I had my meager savings in a 6-month CD that paid 14%.
The extreme income inequality that’s prevalent today, plus automation means that that probably won’t happen for you, but seeing how much higher the wages are now than in March 2020 should reassure you. Things even out, especially if Democrats can avoid shooting themselves in the foot and expand majorities next year. They will raise Social Security for poor olds when the tiny automatic increase doesn’t make them safe.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Watch what they DO. They are not behaving at all like a group that wants infrastructure to pass.
I think that within a couple of weeks Biden will say he tried, that it’s very disappointing that the Rs won’t work with us on something as important as infrastructure, and then he will go back to his ORIGINAL plan.
There is no obligation to go down to something that they don’t want anyway.
MattF
OT. For the record, confirmation of Haberman’s reporting of TFG’s belief that he’ll be reinstated. In National Review, no less.
germy
@MattF:
So he’s building an insanity defense?
Gravenstone
@Mary G: Heh, I remember having a passbook savings account in the mid-late 70s that had 8% interest. That rate, and seed money from a steer I’d “sold” a few years earlier (stepdad gave my sister and I each the proceeds from a pair of cattle sold that year) let me buy my first car. A far cry from the 0.05% I’m getting currently.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It is German finance folks who are still scarred by it. And, to the extent that the Germans exert influence on EU finances….
JPL
@MattF: but, but Lara Trump just said that she hasn’t heard anything about that.
btw Whatever happened to Ivanka? Where’s Jared?
Kent
The devil is really in the details in this sort of thing. the $2.25 trillion plan was never $2.25 trillion being spent next year or even during Biden’s presidency. It was over 10 years. They could take $1 trillion and front-load it into the next 4 years and essentially capture the same infrastructure impact except for the out-years which are going to be future administrations and future congresses. There really isn’t any way for Biden to obligate future presidents and congresses to fund his infrastructure priorities for the year 2031 anyway.
The MINIMUM corporate income tax is interesting and potentially more substantial than just raising the rate. That is how you get to companies like Amazon and Apple which manage to skate by by paying very little tax despite being some of the most profitable corporations in human history.
jl
@jonas: But I think outbreaks will only get out of control if herd immunity threshold not reached.
One thing I forgot to mention about the problem with the ‘herd immunity out of reach’ crowd is that they forget that IF diseased induced immunity last a few years, then we’ll get breathing space of no sustained circulating disease herd immunity steady state even if immunization rate isn’t high enough. For example, suppose immunity from disease and vaccination combined get you to within 10% of herd immunity threshold, then continued spread of disease, a final small epidemic surge will soon get you over the threshold. Then you wait for the stock of cases circulating in the community to burn out. OK then you have no sustained circulating disease steady state herd immunity. Add a few years of protection, and there’s time to put a real periodic mass immunization program with good boosters in place, or work out early childhood immunization program.
Edit: getting the last 10 or 15 percent of disease induced immunity to get to threshold is sad for those who get sick, and will be enormously costly to society, but it was those people’s choice not to get vaccinated, for the most part.
And you just need to get barely over the threshold for community protection. If the ceiling on the reproduction number is, say, 0.95, then from calculations I’ve seen, it takes up to year for the burn out to get from the threshold to steady state herd immunity (watch MS and LA). But once you’re there, we can keep outbreaks manageable with reproduction numbers of 0.95 and 0.98.
Also, the US needs to get up to speed, with best practice countries with rapid, very cheap screening tests for transmissible disease. Millions up millions of these tests can be produced at 50 cents to a dollar. They can help aid outbreak control without broad stringent shutdowns. See Michael Mina twitter on that angle.
Edit: FDA has only approved two quick tests, and they are ridiculously expensive, I think $12.50 each. Best practice countries, govts buy them for a buck and distribute for free, or people can get them OTC for a 50 cents to a buck each.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think you’re focusing on the wrong parts of the bill. The point of the “reforms”, IMO, is all contained within the DMV provisions. Republicans have always supported and promoted making it easier for people who drive or own automobiles to vote. So they’re automatically registering and updating the registrations of people who are more likely to vote Republican and excluding people who are less likely to vote Republican.
This has been going on for decades. The National Voter Registration Act was a fight between Republicans and Democrats on which group of voters should have easy access to the ballot. Republicans supported “motor voter”- the provisions that make a DMV a one stop shop for voter registration, but Republicans opposed Democratic attempts to make other places one stop shops (Job and Family services offices was the big battle).
That’s what ACORN did- they sued on the National Voter Registration Act, over and over and over, because Republicans kept fucking with the parts of the law that were intended to reach low income and urban voters.
Kent
This is all happening in the Senate and not the House which has already passed Biden’s original plan. At some point the Senate and House versions need to be reconciled. If the GOP pulls the plug and refuses to vote for their own negotiated compromise plan there is no reason why the Dem reconciliation committee can’t just reconcile the two bills in favor of the House version and the use reconciliation to pass it with 51 votes.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
When you see Project Veritas setting up their bullshit “stings” that’s what they’re targeting and trying to make people think is nefarious and corrupt- the parts of the National Voter Registration Act that Democrats “got” in exchange for what Republicans wanted, which was “motor voter”.
That’s why they took out ACORN. ACORN sued to enforce that law.
catclub
Which means EVERYBODY remembers it.
germy
jl
Here’s a link to some good news. Almost all states apparently experiencing decline in covid cases. Case counts are greatly affected by extent and nature of testing program, which like much else in US is sucky compared to best practice countries, but coverage of testing tends to be higher, and false positives higher when prevalence low and spread is slowing down. Let’s hope a similar decrease in hospitalizations and deaths follow, which will seal the deal.
COVID-19 cases hit lowest point in U.S. since pandemic began
Axios
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases-infections-vaccines-success-fa7673a1-0582-4e69-aefb-3b5170268048.html
Note the cases are dropping in West and East South Central and South Atlantic. If that is real and sustained, then would be consistent with the more optimistic estimates of the natural reproduction number among kids < 12, which range from 0.25 to 0.5. If the optimistic estimates are correct, then we are in better shape than is commonly reported. Monica Gandhi twitter has some links on estimates for transmission in kids over past couple of weeks.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You’ll notice people call it “motor voter”. It’s a huge laws with lots and lots of provisions and protections for low income voters but as is the custom in this country the only part that “matters” is the part that applies to and was intended to benefit GOP voters.
No one ever has to sue to enforce the DMV provisions. It’s a given those will be followed. They have to sue every single cycle to enforce the other parts of the law, that parts that benefit low income people.
catclub
Not supporting ACORN in the face of Proj Veritas, and the Shirley Sherrod firing… two big avoidable errors.
Roger Moore
@jl:
You also have Colorado and New Mexico, which seem to be keeping up in terms of vaccination rate. At a finer-grained level, it sounds as if some of the Indian Reservations have been doing a very good job of vaccinating everyone, and in many states the urban areas are doing better than rural.
One wildcard is whether there really is a difference in R depending on population density. It’s entirely possible that the virus really does spread better in high density areas than low density, so those rural areas may reach herd immunity at a lower vaccination rate than cities need.
mrmoshpotato
@catclub: They’ll beat his dumb, crazy ass with his own shitty pillows.
taumaturgo
Biden calls on Larry Summers, the same guy who counseled Obama to trim back the response to the Great Recession, which Obama oblige, resulting in the voters revolting to small incremental “improvement” with the democrats losing 69 seats—63 in the House and six in the Senate. One would think this would enough evidence to stay as far away as possible from the likes of Larry Summers, much less call him for advice. 2010 was horrible for Obama and the democrats, will 2022 be worse? If Biden listens to Larry, I wouldn’t bet against it.
Joe Falco
@catclub:
Agreed. I think Stacey Abrams’ voting rights organization, Fair Fight, is filling the void that was left after ACORN dissolved, but it’s something that never should’ve had to happen.
Joe Falco
@mrmoshpotato:
Hopefully with a few rocks inside to help drive the point home!
jl
@Roger Moore:
I’ll try to find links and post later, but I think best evidence from independent data and study designs is that it’s not so much density as over crowded housing.
Rural areas with overcrowded housing, for example Kings and Imperial counties in CA, in agricultural and low wage food processing and distribution, got slammed. And at least Kings, still has one of lowest immunization rates in CA, though not sure if that is due to lack of availability of vaccines for a Hispanic population that is eager to get them, or bad attitude among the local yahoos.
Overcrowding can exist, or not exist, in rural, suburban and urban areas.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
Her dumb ass was flung into Venus. His pasty-faced ass was flung into the Sun. (That’s my hope anyway.)
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: Exactly.
Blog behavior note: FYWP just stopped retaining my ‘nym and email. Only happening on my iPhone SE with the latest version of Safari. This just cropped up today and I did not change or update anything on my end.
Just One More Canuck
@Baud: those goal posts don’t move themselves
Omnes Omnibus
Test.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you a time traveler from the past or just an adorably retro hipster?
ETA amusement for OO
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: It appears to have fixed itself. Clearly, the problem was something Goku did.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Yes.
Steve in the ATL
@jl: I’ve had just about enough of these “facts” contradicting the carefully constructed narrative
MomSense
@taumaturgo:
Fuck Larry Summers – however it is not true that he counseled Obama to cut the stimulus. They passed the ARRA in February of 2009 and we didn’t know the full extent of the financial crisis at that point. Democratic leadership in Congress were talking in the range of 399-500 billion.
Summers and the entire team recommended the high end of what they thought they could get in consultation with congressional leadership.
This Summers cut the stimulus is a zombie lie that was (apparently still is) used to depress turnout. It worked and we all paid the price.
jl
@Steve in the ATL: I don’t understand your comment.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: There’s no level of insanity sufficient to dislodge the GOP from Trump’s ass. Next up: Republican sponsorship of a constitutional amendment to allow “reinstatement.”
Gravenstone
@Betty Cracker: I say we “reinstate” Obama, if they’re gonna play that game. Only after Biden and Harris have run their terms, of course. //
Ruckus
@Subsole:
Thing is, it looks to me that the real sore losers are his followers who think he’s the savior. And we know that’s not true.
NotMax
Femm fatality: If you’re in the mood for a silly trifle, the William Castle campy (and lesser) remake of The Old Dark House coming up on TCM at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time.
Opening credits art by Charles Addams, who, I believe I once read somewhere, also had a hand (uncredited) in the set design.
Ken
@jl: Also, even in rural areas where people live far apart, they often still work, shop, and worship indoors in large groups.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
We would hear Nancy SMASH!’s eyes roll throughout the land.
jl
@Steve in the ATL: If you mean that there is a carefully constructed media narrative that is overly pessimistic, I’d disagree that it is carefully constructed.
Except for the US military killing people and blowing up stuff, the US mass media loves bad news and teaching learned helplessness to the US population.
Many, though by no means all, state and local health departments are existing in some kind of state of sustained fear and torpor, and have no clue how to do real time epidemic control. Here in CA, the state health department often sits on its ass waiting for the fetish of a peer reviewed journal article with a p-value < 0.05 before making a decision. The head of the state department of public health has admitted in public interviews that he hasn’t done, he hasn’t directed his staff to do, their own study of international best practice. They wait for their fetish journal articles to tell them what to do. They have hundreds of very qualified experts in UC, CSU and private universities to can do custom peer review for control policy, rather than some rando academic reviewer and editor, but they won’t. Their attitude is really weird.
Which is why, for the post vaccine reopening, they are sticking with US testing and surveillance methods and programs from almost year ago, and planning, yes, you guessed it, more patented California shutdowns if there is any fall or winter surges.
And a lot of experts feel that they have to be universal experts on infectious disease, and epidemiology, and real time in-the-field epidemic control.
And if you don’t like what I’m saying, please check the twitter people I mentioned and follow their links to other experts who are careful.
Edit: to be clear, I think SF Bay and CA public heath did a brave, heroic and great move to do an early and hard shutdown last March. I only wish they had the information to justify doing it a month earlier. But they seem stuck in time in that early success, really unable and unwilling, perhaps afraid and/or too self-satisfied to move on. They have to move on with the times.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
Did they keep the line “Have a potato.”?
Betty Cracker
@Gravenstone: I was really surprised the NR guy made that observation: that there’s no “reinstatement” mechanism in the constitution and that Trump wouldn’t be “reinstated” even if every one of his outlandish fraud claims were true, which they’re not, of course. The whole thing is so insane.
Honest to dog, I’m unplugging from this shit (gestures vaguely at smoking rubble of American democracy) more and more these days, just for the sake of my own mental health. Biden, Harris, 48 Senate Democrats and 223 Democrats in the House are doing a fine job. But I’m starting to doubt it’s possible to move forward in any meaningful way since we’re weighed down by these nutjobs.
germy
Another Scott
@jl: My step-mom lives in MS. The vaccination rates in most counties there are abysmal – hers is 38.8% (1+ dose). They’re at high risk because of the high minority population density and low income.
But infection rates, etc., are falling there as well.
I hope the trend continues, but I fear it’s the calm before the storm. Herd
mentalityimmunity for the country as a whole may be easier to achieve than for regions like that, and vast stretches of the country are regions like that…:-(
We can’t give up. It’s good that Biden-Harris are trying many, many things to increase vaccine uptake everywhere.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
The little known Bureau of Presidential Reinstatement. Which Dolt 45 will retroactively create by executive order.
//
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
It’s such a disconnect. 1/3 of the country is in a GD cult. They are dangerous. Meanwhile the rose crowd completely ignore the existential threat that the cultists present to our democracy and are constantly bitching about things that will never happen. I’m seeing young adults I’ve known since they were in diapers sounding like tankies.
I feel like poor Mr. Jetson stuck on the dog walking conveyor belt. Jane, stop this crazy ride!
jl
@Another Scott: Hope your kind down in MS do well. I don’t know if there are good published estimates, but some current epi estimates by experts at my ivory tower joint say that IF natural and vaccine immunity last a couple of years, even MS will get to heard immunity steady state by the end of this year, but maybe a very bumpy ride periodically. Which is sad avoidable dangerous and tragic. Dangerous and irresponsible because while none of the variants threaten enough vaccine escape so far to threaten eventual herd immunity, the higher the circulating disease, the higher the chances of that disaster occurring.
Which is why we should all write our Congresscrooks and Biden to get on the stick in a serious effort to get the global population immunized asap. The Pfizer CEO is acting very unethically, IMHO, and he is just a money suit in this area, and has repeatedly shown little knowledge but a lot of greed about his company’s covid vaccine.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
No, we cannot give up. Ever.
Soprano2
In my state they do, at least if you’re talking about roads and bridges and sewer and water and stuff like that. They’d rather pay for it with federal dollars than gas tax money.
Wapiti
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): 1 drop box per county. Holy…
Here’s a partial extract of WA law:
(2) The county auditor must establish a minimum of one ballot drop box per fifteen thousand registered voters in the county and a minimum of one ballot drop box in each city, town, and census-designated place in the county with a post office.
(3) At the request of a federally recognized Indian tribe with a reservation in the county, the county auditor must establish at least one ballot drop box on the Indian reservation on a site selected by the tribe that is accessible to the county auditor by a public road.
We have 100% mail voting, so need lots of boxes, but 1 per county is absurd.
JoyceH
@mrmoshpotato:
What’s weird, though, is that the news anchors keep referring to Trump as being ‘down at Mar A Lago’, and I’m pretty sure he’s shifted to Bedminster by now. It’s weird that there’s this nebulous disconnect about where the guy even IS. Seems so… Soviet.
Kathleen
@Baud: Yeah. No secret decoder rings either.
Ken
As long as he’s not one of those people who files a bug report with “I’m using my five-year-old Android phone which I jailbroke to install custom OS mods, with a homebrew browser loosely based on a fork of Chrome, and I noticed when I visit your website all characters in the Unicode Supplementary Ideographic Plane are rendered upside-down. Please fix your CSS.”
mrmoshpotato
I believe the proper responses are “You lost! Get over it!” and “Fuck your feelings!”
ETA – it’s also hilarious that “Republican voters questioning election integrity” possibly bit the bastards on the ass – hard!
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: What world do you live in where all this detail is given? ?
“Your site is broken!”
Roger Moore
@Ken:
Closed. Unable to reproduce.
Steve in the ATL
@Roger Moore:
If only that were true of conservatives around the world….
terraformer
@guachi:
Hear, F-ing
Hear
William D
Sorry about your neighbor…you tried! I have teen daughters who are dead set against the vaccine. Could use some ideas
Steve in the ATL
@William D: $20 Hot Topic gift cards?
WaterGirl
@William D: Offer them each $100 if they get both shots.
Alternatively, tell them that if they don’t get the shots they are grounded because they are making everyone at home less safe, so the only responsible thing for them to do is to not go out.
Subsole
@Ruckus: Fair point, and I agree.
The problem is those seem to be exactly the voices Bernie elevated and amplified for borh his runs, including the second, when after 4 years of Trump, he damn well knew better.
He never demonstrated any interest in mitigating the damage until his shitty hires had backed him into a corner – and often after it was way too late.
So yeah. I still lay it at his feet.
Subsole
@germy:
Hey! Heyheyhey! You can’t just go around giving the other half of the quote like that!
@MomSense: I am curious: how online are the tankie-kids?
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud: ALL RIGHT! Finally!