Most determined efforts to abuse the public trust

I had written that Sen. Ron Johnson required the entire virus relief bill was to be read aloud on the Senate floor. That took 10 hours 43 minutes. Then there was to be 20 hours of debate on the bill. Johnson had set up a system to have at least one GOP senator on the floor at all times. But none of them, including Johnson, stuck around, so after three hours Sen. Chris Van Hollen requested debate be cut off. Democrats agreed. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos related that story which happened Thursday evening. She then reported the negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democrat. She also listed the provisions of the bill. By 12:30 this afternoon the bill had passed. In today’s post McCarter discussed the last minute wrangling. Though the final bill does not quite have everything Biden requested it will still provide a great deal of help to Americans and has been called the most progressive bill in a lifetime. Because the Senate changed the bill it must go back to the House for one more vote, then off to Biden’s signature. Lauren Floyd of Kos reported that Black Voters Matter and the New Georgia Project of the NAACP have released a list of corporations that have donated to Georgia GOP legislators in support of voter suppression. Floyd included the list. On seeing it some of my buying decisions are a bit more complicated. Mark Sumner of Kos reviewed a new CDC report that shows a mask mandate profoundly reduces the number of COVID cases and the number of death beginning about three weeks after the mandate begins. Opening restaurants for dining profoundly increases the number of COVID cases and deaths, also about three weeks after the opening. So Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ended the state's mask mandate and opened restaurants. Sumner wrote:

Across the nation, a number of Republican governors are rushing to drop mask mandates and end social distancing guidelines. It almost seems as if they’re both convinced that President Biden will provide competent federal distribution of vaccines that will overcome even their most determined efforts to engage in abuse of the public trust. Or they simply want to screw things up and prevent schools, the economy, and the nation from returning to anything like “normal.” The harm being done by these policies, along with Republican resistance to the vaccine, means that some states aren’t just likely to suffer unnecessarily, but could remain hotbeds of coronavirus activity, kicking out dangerous variants, long after this whole mess should have been over. In other words: If governors like Greg Abbott would just hold their damn horses for a few weeks, and white Republicans would stop checking in with QAnon long enough to get a jab, this thing could be over. Their shouts of “freedom!” are making the whole pandemic both worse and longer.

Yeah, they really do want to kill us, to get in as many deaths as possible before the vaccine takes hold.