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Prisons, Water Infrastructure And Broadband: Where States Are Spending Their Pandemic Relief Funding
“combined with previous coronavirus response bills and spending packages, the federal government has now spent almost $5 trillion addressing the pandemic”
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“It’s not clear yet where all this money will go — states have an enormous amount of leeway as to how they’ll spend it and until 2026 to do so. (In total, $155 billion went out to states in 2021, with the rest due to be distributed later this year.) Most states have used the windfall of cash to address the budget problems caused by the economic downturn following the pandemic and to address the inequities thrown into sharp relief during the past two years. But while there are broad commonalities in how states have spent the money, it’s also true that how relief from the pandemic is defined varies widely — not necessarily across partisan lines but in ways that are still shaped by local conditions and ideology.”
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“Almost every state that has allocated money so far has spent some on broadband, water and sewer infrastructure”
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“Infrastructure has also been a big priority for states like Florida, which is spending money on highways and other transportation projects that had been long-planned but unfinished. Lazere said some of the need for infrastructure goes all the way back to the Great Recession, which began in 2007, and the long, slow recovery that followed. “These were areas of need that had not been addressed, [for which] there hadn’t been a dedicated state or federal funding source, so the rescue plan gave them the opportunity to tackle these problems that had been around for a long time,” he said.
Additionally, because the funds are a large, one-time payment, with no expectation that they’ll continue into the future, it encourages spending on infrastructure.
“It really starts with states doing that analysis, to be able to know what’s affordable over the long-term and what’s not,” said Josh Goodman, who is part of The Pew Charitable Trusts’s state fiscal health project.”
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“In Alabama, $400 million will be used for building two new prisons.”
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“the state has been under a court order to improve mental health care in its prisons since 2017, and advocates of the new law say using the recovery funds to build a new prison will address those problems, as well as overcrowding and inadequate staffing. They also say the new facilities will improve the overall health care and mental health care available to incarcerated individuals.”
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“In more liberal states and localities, lawmakers are pursuing new financial assistance programs for local families. One idea that has picked up steam is funding guaranteed income pilot programs, with eligible residents receiving between $500 and $1,000 in cash assistance monthly. Support for these programs has been growing across the ideological spectrum, especially in the last few years.”
Jackass Embodied Gen X’s Casual Indifference to Authority
“in a recent interview with the New York Times, Wee Man noted that American culture has changed since the show first ran:
“Gender stuff and, you know, things like that….When we first started, there was never going to be a girl in it,” he said. “We didn’t think it was funny for girls to get hurt. For us, it was like, ‘That’s not funny’ — hurting a girl.” Now, paradoxically, it would be in poor taste to not hurt a girl on “Jackass” — and so they do.””
The Federal Government’s Pandemic Jobs Program Was a Resounding Failure
“A recent study of the program’s effects from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finds that the majority of the funds spent by the program went to business owners and shareholders rather than to workers themselves. Ultimately, “only 23 to 34 percent of the program’s funds went directly to workers who would have otherwise lost their jobs.” The jobs it did keep in place were preserved at very high cost—somewhere between $170,000 and $257,000 a year, far more than the typical earnings of affected workers, which are closer to $58,000 per year.
While the PPP was able to save some jobs, albeit, at a very high cost, the overall result of the program was precisely the opposite of what was intended. The purpose of the program was to preserve the jobs of wage workers, not to funnel money to business owners. As David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and the lead researcher behind the paper, told The New York Times recently, “it turns out [the money] didn’t primarily go to workers who would have lost jobs. It went to business owners and their shareholders and their creditors.” The program, he added, was “highly regressive.””
Georgia Election Investigation Fails, Once Again, To Find Massive Voter Fraud
“Much was made both during and after the 2020 presidential election about rampant voter fraud. This week, yet another of those claims fell apart under scrutiny.
In September 2020, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that more than 1,000 people may have voted more than once in the state’s primary and runoff elections that year. Amid ongoing allegations of widespread vote fraud from President Donald Trump, Raffensperger charged that the voters in question returned absentee ballots, and then also voted in person—a violation of both state and federal law. Raffensperger assembled a task force to investigate, and he warned that convictions under Georgia law would garner up to 10 years in prison and $100,000 in fines.
But now, Raffensperger admits that his initial claims were overblown.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday that in response to requests for information about the investigation, the secretary of state’s office indicated that only around 300 cases of double-voting were ultimately substantiated, “almost always because of mistakes by confused voters and poll workers.” Of the 1,339 cases which Raffensperger initially claimed, the confirmed total represents barely more than one-fifth (22 percent), though the paper contends that about 100 cases remain “under investigation.””
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“Georgia voters who fill out an absentee ballot may either mail it in or drop it off. They could also go to their polling place and vote in person instead. In that case, according to page 55 of the State of Georgia Poll Worker Manual, the poll worker’s terminal will prompt that the voter has been issued an absentee ballot. At that time, the voter would either turn in their absentee ballot to be discarded, or if they did not have it with them, the poll worker would call to verify that the ballot had not been counted before having the voter fill out a form requesting their original ballot be canceled.
If, as Raffensperger alleged, more than 1,000 voters cast more than one vote, by mailing back an absentee ballot and then also voting in person, then in every single case that would require a failure on the part of the state of Georgia or its poll workers.
There is evidence that Raffensperger’s office realized this when he first made the claim. According to emails published by American Oversight, a government accountability watchdog group, on the same day that Raffensperger made the announcement about double-voting, Ryan Germany, the general counsel to the secretary of state, was advising members of the task force on the subject: “There are systematic checks to stop double voting from happening, and those checks appear to be largely working as intended. [Some] people likely voted twice inadvertently or because they were not sure if their absentee ballot had been returned on time.””
Worst-Case Climate Change Scenarios Are Highly Implausible, Argues New Study
Trump’s Trade Deal With China Was an Abject Failure, Just Like the Trade War
“The so-called “phase one” trade deal inked in December 2019 by former President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping might have put an end to the spiraling trade war between the two countries, but the agreement did not result in China buying more American goods, as both leaders promised it would. In fact, during the two years covered by the deal, China imported fewer American goods than before the trade war began—meaning that the deal did not even succeed at patching up the damage caused by Trump’s bellicose trade policies.”
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“We now know that the promised benefits did not materialize. But the costs certainly keep adding up. Auto manufacturers, for example, shifted supply chains to avoid the cost of tariffs and economic uncertainty created by the trade war—by relocating some American manufacturing jobs to China, which has become a large and growing market for auto sales. BMW, for example, shifted much of the production of its X3 sport-utility vehicle from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to China after reporting that tariffs had cut the company’s American profits by about $338 million in 2018. The higher costs imposed by the trade war caused Tesla to announce that it was “accelerating construction” of a new plant in Shanghai.
Overall, Bown estimates, exports to China would have been $26 billion higher in 2020 and $39 billion higher in 2021 if not for the impact of the trade war and subsequent trade deal. That doesn’t account for other losses sustained during the trade war, like the increased farm subsidies paid for by American taxpayers and the run-of-the-mill cost increases created by tariffs.
Aside from some positive developments with regard to China’s treatment of intellectual property and financial services, probably the only good thing about Trump’s “phase one” trade deal is that it has now expired.
“President Trump’s trade war and phase one agreement did little to change China’s economic policymaking,” Bown concludes. “Beijing seems intent on becoming more state-centered and less market oriented.””
China Brings Out the Hypocrisy in Corporate Social Justice Warriors
“Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”
Good for him. China crushed freedom in Hong Kong.
But China didn’t like hearing an NBA executive say that. Chinese TV stopped broadcasting Rockets games. The NBA then apparently told its players and front offices to shut up. Morey deleted his tweet and instead tweeted that he “did not intend to cause any offense.”
The NBA itself also apologized to China, saying that they were “disappointed” by Morey’s “inappropriate” tweet. Lebron James called Morey “misinformed.” James Harden said, “We love China.”
“China is able to strong-arm these companies…into actually acquiescing with its ideology,” complains Chen.
That ideology is often grotesque. The U.S. and other countries accuse China of committing genocide against a mostly Muslim minority group, the Uyghurs.
China imprisons them in “reeducation camps.” Leaked satellite footage shows blindfolded men, with their hands tied behind their backs, in what looks like a concentration camp.
“They are forced into slave labor,” says Chen.
A few Uyghurs who escaped say they were tortured.
But although the NBA runs ads that say, “Speak for the people who may not be able to be heard,” it clearly does not want its players, coaches, or executives to say anything about Uyghur genocide.”
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“Hollywood doesn’t care either. The movie Mulan was filmed in the same region where Uyghurs are tortured. In the credits, Disney gave “special thanks” to government departments in Xinjiang, where the abuse occurs.
Fast and Furious 9 actor John Cena, promoting his movie to people in Taiwan, said, “Taiwan is the first country that can watch F9.”
What was wrong with that?
“He had the audacity to allude to the fact that Taiwan was a country,” says Chen, “rather than a territory owned by China.”
I don’t know what China said to Cena or Universal Pictures, but soon Cena was on Chinese social media, groveling to China, saying “sorry” over and over. “I have made a mistake….I really love and respect the Chinese people….I made a mistake,” he pleaded.
Chen calls that pathetic. “I think the Chinese government actually takes a lot of pleasure knowing that they can actually strong-arm individuals and companies into capitulation to its own political ideology.””
Facebook’s ‘Monopoly’ Was Always Doomed
“Facebook is still a behemoth, and it has a long way to fall before that will cease to be true (if it ever is). I’m not suggesting we start writing eulogies yet. But the U.S. (and European Union) antitrust push against Facebook and other big tech companies assumes—and often explicitly argues—that Facebook’s power is permanent and its market share irreversible. Recent developments and ancient history show that’s very obviously not the case.”