Crumbling infrastructure is theft by white people

I finished the novel Shtum by Jem Lester. It wasn’t until the last sentence of the book that I got a glimpse of what the title means. Thankfully, the blurb on the back of the book says it is Yiddish for silence. The setting is London and story is narrated by Ben Jewell. He has a son Jonah who is ten and on the severe end of the autism spectrum – he doesn’t speak, still wears a nappy, and can get quite violent when his needs are not met the way he wants. There is also wife Emma and father Georg, who is Jewish and uses a few Yiddish words. The main issue in the book is how to set up the next step in appropriate education for Jonah. Two nearby schools, supposedly designed up for autistic kids, are clearly not able to meet Jonah’s needs. A third, much farther away, would be quite suitable, but much more expensive. But they don’t accept money from the parents (not that Ben could afford it). They money must come from Ben’s district government. And they have to be convinced the extra money is necessary. Lawsuits have to be filed. Emma tells Ben that the case will have a better chance if the family splits up and Ben files as a single father. So Ben and Jonah move in with Georg. There are a lot of scenes of Ben caring (or trying to) for Jonah. Georg helps too. At times Jonah can make that difficult – he can go from freshly bathed to needing an urgent bath in about the time it takes Ben to turn around. There is another important aspect of the story – Ben is an alcoholic. He treats most attempts at discussion as an attack. So for much of the book he isn’t an appealing character. By the end Ben realizes wordless Jonah is a much better communicator than the speaking adults. Much of the story is autobiographical (I doubt the alcoholism). Lester’s son Noah is also profoundly autistic and Lester had the same kind of battle for Noah’s education. I bought the book because it is compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, which I read and enjoyed several years ago. I also enjoyed the stage play based on it. That book is narrated by a mildly autistic teenager. This one is by the father of a profoundly autistic boy. I enjoyed it. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos gave an update on COVID. He hasn’t done this in a while. Studies, summarized in Nature show the virus came out of the Hunan “wet market” and not out of a lab. There are about 60K new cases a day in the country. Because of home testing that number is low. The average deaths per day has been hovering at 475 and has been stable for five months. Even a mild case can damage the heart, leading to medical problems and a burden on the health system later. There may be 10-19 million people with long COVID, about 3% to 6% of the population. And that number is growing. The pandemic is not over. Yet, mask requirements are being dropped. The good news is vaccines work and the updated vaccines geared to the latest variants are even better. Keep your boosters up to date. The latest prank by Ron DeathSantis is to go to Texas (because Florida doesn’t have the necessary bodies), lure migrants onto chartered planes, and land them in Martha’s Vineyard without telling the locals they are coming. The migrants are being well taken care of. (Perhaps gay and trans people might appreciate the flight out of a red state.) That gimmick prompted Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, to tweet:

Since Texas and Florida no longer wish to handle their role as border states (whether by land or water), and instead wish to use migrants as political pawns, I guess we should stop spending billions of federal taxpayer dollars funding border fortifications in their states. I guess we can stop spending federal resource breaking up human smuggling operations in Texas, since they want to play politics.

At the end of August I wrote about the crumbling water system in Jackson, Mississippi. The system lost pressure because of a flood on the Pearl River. The system has been crumbling for a couple decades. Part of the problem is white flight. The other part of the problem, as I wrote at the time, is:

The Republican majority state legislature isn’t about to make things easier for a black majority city, even if it is the city where they have to come to work.

Last I heard the Jackson water system was back up to full pressure, but what came out of taps was quite brown. Michael Harriot, writing for The Grio adds some more facts. Jackson isn’t the poorest city in Mississippi. However, it has the highest percentage of black people. The other poor cities are majority white and their water systems are just fine. The legislature is in Republican control and is 71% white in a state that is 58% white. Jackson is 5.6% of the state’s population, yet generates 7.7% of the sales tax revenue (as of 2019). Sales tax is the states largest source of income. In 2022 the state had a $1.46 billion surplus. When Jackson applied for $42 million for infrastructure repairs – about 2% of what it contributes to the state – the legislature denied it. The city is getting back much less than it contributes to the state. The cities with water problems – Jackson, Flint, and Baltimore come to mind – are black majority. Water is a necessity that is being denied. Harriot calls this theft and welfare for white people.