Lock Him Up!

 Current Affairs  No Responses »
Mar 312023
 

Like just about everyone else on the Internet, I don’t have any keen insights regarding Trump’s indictment. I do find it amusing that this relatively small-potatoes case involving his efforts to cover up a sexual encounter is the first to expose him to criminal charges. With any luck, more serious charges will soon follow related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his incitement of the January 6 riot. In a sane world, any criminal indictment would functionally disqualify Trump as a presidential candidate, but we do not live in such a world.

I have no idea how this indictment will play out politically. The charges don’t seem substantive enough to spark street riots. Then again, trying to predict how the MAGA crowd will respond to any provocation is a fool’s game. If Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley were cleverer and more creative, they might be able to exploit the indictment to their advantage, but neither one seems to have the political chops. If anything, the person most likely to benefit is Trump, at least in the short run.

My favorite comment from someone on MetaFilter: “Hey, he finally won a popular vote!”

Better Late than Never

 Current Affairs, Geeking Out, Health Care  No Responses »
Mar 042023
 

After months of ignoring warnings from my WordPress dashboard that I needed to upgrade something called “PHP” or my blog might suffer some unspecified yet disastrous fate, I spent the last couple of hours figuring out how to do that. I soon realized that I would also have to find an updated version of my WordPress theme and install that as well. The fact that I didn’t completely vaporize my blog as I bumbled through this process has left me feeling a bit self-satisfied. I might be an old man, but I can still manage to do simple website maintenance. I’d like a cookie, please.

I also wanted to call attention to this piece in the Washington Post about North Carolina legislators finally agreeing to expand Medicaid after years of resistance from state Republicans. The article points out that political opposition to Medicaid expansion is becoming increasingly untenable for lawmakers, especially in purple states like North Carolina. And even that statement is giving Republicans too much slack. Opposition to expansion has never been tenable, at least not from a moral standpoint.

State leaders who continue to refuse expansion are denying health coverage to their neediest citizens because of an ideology that is openly hostile to any kind of assistance to the poor and marginalized. They may try to camouflage that ideology with platitudes about freedom and personal responsibility, but voters are no longer buying that bullshit. Ever since Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, Medicaid has grown more popular as people understand its role in helping the single parent with two kids who lives down the street or the colleague at work who depends on personal care assistants to live independently. House Republicans are still flirting with deep cuts to Medicaid, but such legislation seems unlikely to pass even if a Republican president wins office next year.

Millions of people still have no health coverage because they live in red states where policymakers are more interested in making political statements than serving their people. Perhaps advocates can use North Carolina as a case study in how to persuade recalcitrant legislators to say yes to expansion.

Game On

 Current Affairs, Games  No Responses »
Dec 242022
 

I’m taking some time off during the holidays to catch up on my various pop culture obsessions, including books and games. My backlog of unplayed games is already embarrassingly long, but I couldn’t resist the impulse to buy a few more titles yesterday during the current Steam sale. I clearly have a problem. And if this whole attorney thing doesn’t work out, perhaps I can start a second career as a professional Twitch streamer. The disability community already has a presence on the site, so maybe my idea of streaming myself playing games while commenting on the latest Supreme Court decisions isn’t so far-fetched.

Speaking of virtual communities, the downward spiral of Twitter is a fascinating trainwreck. I was never a Musk fanboy, but I respected what he had accomplished with Tesla and SpaceX. But after watching him run Twitter into the ground, I wonder if Musk’s accomplishments should be attributed to employees who are much smarter than him. He seems more interested in shitposting and banning journalists rather than effectively running Twitter. And now Neuralink, Musk’s venture into brain-computer interfaces, is under investigation for animal cruelty. It looks I won’t be writing blog entries with my mind anytime soon.

The Long Emergency Ahead

 Current Affairs, Disability, Fucked Up  1 Response »
Apr 152020
 

Ed Yong writes in The Atlantic about what our Pandemic Summer might look like. It has a strong dystopian vibe: frequent testing for the virus, half-empty restaurants and classrooms, and intermittent lockdowns in the event of additional outbreaks. You probably won’t be able to see a ball game or attend a big family reunion anytime soon. This summer and the months beyond are going to be a time of uncertainty as we try to figure out how to live with the coronavirus until a vaccine is available.

Yong also points out that we will all need resilience to cope with what lies ahead; something that people with disabilities have been practicing for most of our lives:

The disability community has also noted that, at a time when their health is in jeopardy and their value is in question, abled people are struggling with a new normal that is their old normal—spatial confinement, unpredictable futures, social distance. “We know how to do community from afar, and how to organize from bed,” said Ashley Shew of Virginia Tech, who studies the intersection between technology and disability. “Instead of feeling this great vacuum, our social life hasn’t radically changed.” 

When people ask me how I’ve been doing during the quarantine, I shrug and say, “Fine.” It’s not that I don’t miss my friends and co-workers or going to the movies. I do, but it’s not like I had a packed social calendar before the pandemic arrived. Given the specifics of my disability, the lack of accessibility in much of our built environment, and my own introversion, I’m already accustomed to some degree of isolation. As long as I have a working Internet connection, I can find plenty of things to keep me occupied at home. And I have a nice view of downtown, which helps to keep the walls from closing in.

Right now, I’m not planning on visiting a restaurant or movie theater until this fall at the earliest. If I turn out to be wrong, great. A strategy of hoping for the best but expecting the worst might be the best approach for the next few months. For many of us with disabilities, such thinking is already our default.

Dispatch From Quarantine

 Current Affairs, Fucked Up  No Responses »
Apr 102020
 

Well, all of this is pretty awful, isn’t it?

I’ve read and watched plenty of dystopian fiction over the years and I would idly wonder what it would be like to live through some kind of global crisis. And I guess I have my answer now. For me, the past four weeks have been a surreal blur as I watch a litany of horrors unfold on television and in my Twitter feed, punctuated by moments of anxiety or rage. I worry about getting sick (even though I I haven’t left my home in over four weeks). I’m being very careful to limit my contact with other people, but I can’t completely isolate myself because I still rely on a team of nurses for my daily needs. They are being incredibly conscientious about washing their hands and staying at home, but my risk of getting sick certainly isn’t nil.

And when I’m not worrying about my own health, I’m fuming at Trump’s boundless narcissism, stupidity, and incompetence. All of these traits were fully on display during his presidential run, but his supporters simply shrugged and handed the White House to a man singularly unfit for the office. And now here we are. Do you want to know what really sends me into a white-hot rage? Despite this administration perpetuating a clusterfuck of historic proportions, the fall election will still be a close affair because conservatives have convinced millions of Americans that any efforts to create a more humane society will turn us into communist zombies or some such bullshit.

In the midst of my anxiety and outrage, I need to remember how fortunate I am. I’m still employed and able to work from home. So many people are struggling with basic issues of survival and I’m fretting about politics.

I probably won’t be able to leave home for at least a few more weeks and I hope to do some more blogging during this weird time. Writing has always helped me clarify my thoughts and I haven’t done enough of it lately. In the meantime, please wash your hands and stay home as much as you can. You’re giving people like me a fighting chance to live through this pandemic.

The Eternal Struggle

 Current Affairs, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 312018
 

At this point, news of another corruption scandal within the Trump administration is not surprising. These stories have become disturbingly routine over the past year, as have the shrugs from the vast majority of Trump supporters in reaction to such news. Trump’s election has opened my eyes to the fact that many Americans are basically cool with a corrupt form of petty authoritarianism as long as they feel that their tribe is part of the “in” group that will benefit from said authoritarianism. Human history certainly provides plenty of examples of our willingness to get behind a strongman who promises to protect us from those people, but it’s depressing to watch these tendencies play out in real time.

During the Cold War, we framed human conflict as a struggle between competing political ideologies. It seems more accurate to frame conflict as a struggle between our most basic and twin natures: the desire to surround ourselves with people who are just like us in a society shaped by a powerful few and the desire to find a way to live alongside those who are different from us in a society shaped by democratic norms. Our darker instincts seem to have the upper hand at the moment, both in America and around the world. Perhaps all of our history will be a pendulum swinging between the impulses writ large of our better angels and our inner demons. I want to believe that the pendulum will begin to move in the other direction soon, even as the daily news tests my optimism.

Abandon Ship

 Current Affairs, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 062018
 

Another top adviser for the Trump administration, Gary Cohn, has announced his resignation. His departure may be connected to Trump’s impulsive decision last week to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. The turnover rate in the White House, which now includes moderates like Cohn, raises important questions about the quality of the advice that Trump receives from the remaining members of his inner circle. Will Stephen Miller become even more empowered to push his agenda of white grievance and isolationism? Will Trump appoint some brown-nosing intern to advise him on trade policy? Do we really have a president or just a useful idiot for whomever happens to be whispering in his ear?

Chaos is enveloping this administration despite a decent economy and a relatively calm global scene. If a crisis occurs and the only people left to advise the president are cranks and incompetents, we shouldn’t be surprised if things quickly spiral out of control.

About That Swamp…

 Current Affairs, Fucked Up, Politics  1 Response »
Feb 282018
 

While Trump pretends to play dealmaker again, his cabinet continues to demonstrate that they are really bad at hiding their corruption. The Times reported yesterday that the Department of Housing and Urban Development spent $31,000 on a dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office. This news comes on top of previous allegations that Carson used his position to secure government contracts for his son.

These people are just the fucking worst. While Carson was busy redecorating his office, his agency proposed steep cuts to housing programs for the poor and the elderly. I’m sure Carson doesn’t see any hypocrisy in his actions, which is the whole problem. Trump’s appointees seem happy to treat their positions of public service as personal fiefdoms with no care for how their actions might violate the public trust. In fact, they work diligently on plans to undermine the core missions of their agencies.

I have no doubt that Carson was once a talented surgeon, but he’s also a grifter. His presidential campaign was little more than a scam to line his pockets and he can’t seem to turn down another opportunity to scam the American people.

The Right To Work–For Less

 Current Affairs, Law  2 Responses »
Feb 262018
 

The Supreme Court heard a case today that could seriously undermine unions for public employees and deliver another blow to the broader labor movement. The case centers on whether public employee unions can require employees who are not full members to pay a fair share to help cover the costs of negotiating contracts and representing employees in individual disputes. This may sound like an esoteric issue, but the consequences of a ruling against unions could be dramatic. In states that have passed right to work laws that include the elimination of fair share payments, membership in public employee unions has plummeted. This leaves the unions with less negotiating power on core issues like wages, health care costs, and family leave.

Conservative critics of unions argue that individuals shouldn’t be required to give money to a union when they disagree with its politics or lobbying efforts. This ignores the fact that all employees, whether they are full members of the union or not, benefit from the bargaining power of the union. And if the union is significantly weakened, all of the employees stand to lose. Conservatives don’t genuinely care about the First Amendment rights of public sector workers; it’s a pretense for destroying what little political influence the labor movement still has.

I belong to a public sector union, so I have a personal stake in this fight. Public sector jobs have long been a a gateway to the middle class for society’s marginalized, including people of color and people with disabilities. If our unions no longer have the resources to advocate for us and our fellow workers, that gateway may slowly disappear.

 

The ACA Lives! Again!

 Current Affairs, Health Care, Politics  1 Response »
Mar 242017
 

A few thoughts on the demise of the American Health Care Act:

  • Paul Ryan is not a smart man. As others have noted, he is a dumb guy’s idea of a smart man. He actually thought he could pass a bill in a month without doing any of the hard work necessary to pass major legislation. He didn’t reach out to stakeholders. He didn’t hold public hearings. He barely allowed any debate on the bill. And I’m not even getting into the substance of the bill, which was breathtaking in its cruelty.
  • Trump is low-energy! Seriously, he couldn’t be bothered to focus on the task of realizing a major campaign promise for more than a few weeks. He claims to be more interested in tax reform, but that’s likely to be even more arduous than his failed attempt to repeal the ACA. He’ll need to be able sell tax reform on its merits, but he’s shown no capability for this.
  • The voices of constituents matter. If you called your representative or senator, if you showed up at a town hall meeting, if you wrote a letter to your newspaper, then you played a part in the demise of this terrible bill.
  • The fight is not over. Republicans will try to sabotage the ACA through regulatory actions, funding cuts, and other shenanigans. People of good conscience must be prepared to fight any efforts to diminish the effectiveness of the ACA. We must also offer practical solutions to fix the shortcomings of the ACA. And maybe we can even find bipartisan consensus on those fixes.
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