Encouraging your neighbors to snitch

I checked Michigan’s COVID data today, as I do on most Saturdays. The peak new cases per day for the week on June 20 has been revised upward from 160 to 170. For the week of June 27 it has been revised upward from 169 to 180. For the week of July 4, this past week, the peak was 207. Since the peak was the day after a holiday some of the numbers may not have settled into the right day yet and revisions are likely. However, from this data it looks like Michigan’s new cases per day has been 1.8/100K, rising in this past week to 2.1/100K. This data is the peak for the week and the rest of the week is lower. In the last two weeks the highest number of deaths in a day was 6 with four days with 1 death and two with zero. That is good news. Leah McElrath tweeted a quote from the New York Times, then commented on it. The NYT article header read, “The World Health Organization director-general said the toll was continuing to rise largely because of dangerous virus variants and inequities in vaccine ...” McElrath:

Four million REPORTED deaths: “It took nine months for the virus to claim one million lives…The second million were lost in three and a half months, the third in three months, and the fourth in about two and a half months” Excess deaths are even higher. Total EXCESS death estimates vary between 7-13 million—or twice the total reported deaths, even when using lower estimates.

McElrath included a link to The Economist that has the excess death estimates. Aysha Qamar of Daily Kos reported on the new abortion ban in Texas that goes into effect in September. It says abortion is banned after six weeks, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. This law has a strange provision. State officials are not allowed to enforce the law. The citizens – your neighbors – are. A person can file a suit against someone who violates the ban or assists someone in violating the ban. There is also a $10,000 reward for those who report an abortion. Yes, that completely inverts the legal system. And, because officials aren’t enforcing the law Planned Parenthood can’t sue the Attorney General to stop the law, they must wait until a citizen sues them. Qamar added:

So not only can ordinary citizens sue anyone getting an abortion but they do not have to be connected to them, just confirm that the abortion reported was done so successfully. Anyone involved in helping one obtain an abortion whether that be a family member, rape crisis counselors, and other medical professionals could be open to lawsuits, due to the broad language of the bill.

As for those who might report for the $10K prize, it might be your Starbucks barista who overhears a comment. Qamar concluded:

Policies that ban or limit abortion do not decrease the number of abortions, as some GOP officials believe. Instead, they restrict a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy and increase the number of unsafe abortions and maternal health problems that occur.

Encouraging your neighbors (at least fellow citizens) to snitch on your personal life has a very authoritarian sense to it. This reminds me of the East German Stasi, though in that case they demanded neighbors snitch. Commenter Doctor Grumpus wrote:

Flood. The. System. It makes no difference if one has actual information or not. Create a website about how to file a suit. and then start filing suits against random folks. Hell, against non-random folks (state legislators, anyone?). “I have reason to believe...”

Beto O’Rourke tweeted that the Texas House has started hearing public comments on their voter suppression bill. Over 400 people signed up to testify in person. Even if they have only two minutes each this could take a while. Which is good. It looks like another heat dome in the West. The aptly named Furnace Creek Visitor Center of Death Valley National Park reported the temperature hit 130F. Leah McElrath tweeted:

Death Valley soars to 130 degrees Fahrenheit (≈54 degrees Celsius), matching Earth’s highest temperature in at least 90 years. (The validity of the only two other recorded higher temperatures is questioned.)

Warnock Warrior tweeted a thread that explains a bit about Sen. Joe Manchin. I thought I had better verify this so I did a search and saw this was indeed reported back in 2016 and at the time Republicans tried to tarnish Manchin with it (of course, now he’s their obstructionist darling). Alas, bits of this thread are a bit unclear. Back about 2015 when Manchin was West Virginia governor, his wife Gayle was president of the State Board of Education. In that role she championed the idea that every school should have at least two EpiPens on hand at all times. I’m not sure how the president of the state board made that a national requirement. EpiPens are great devices that quickly and easily reverse a severe and possibly deadly allergic reaction. I think that part make sense. However ... Heather Bresch, their daughter, was CEO of Mylan, the company that makes the pens. She did two things very quickly. She raised the price of a two-pack of pens from $100 to $600 and gave herself a 700% raise. When Bresch was suspected of lying about earning an MBA Daddy the governor applied a bit of muscle to UWV so they would lie for her. Who does Joe Manchin serve? A while back I quoted a tweet from Sarah Kendzior:

A failed coup is a dress rehearsal. A political party that stages a coup and blocks investigation ultimately wants that coup to succeed. A political party that did not stage a coup but does not assertively, quickly investigate and prosecute it *also* wants that coup to succeed.

A few days ago Eduardo Sanchez quoted Kendzior and tweeted:

As someone who grew up in Central America as a teen during the 70s and 80s please do not take these warnings by @sarahkendzior as scare mongering. She describes our current political reality. Several #BananaRepublicans sent tweets basically saying that if you could not see America, the way they do, then you should go live elsewhere. All without ever mentioning The Coup, or 522,000 Americans GOP sponsored or killed during last 1.5 years. They mean every word they say. The GOP spent every post WWII decade sponsoring far right, fascist regimes that resulted in the extreme sado-fascism that killed over 300,000 Central American civil wars 1960 - 1996- most after 1980. GOP has imported those tactics and ideology. The Trump #BananaRepublican Party only cares about seizing power by ANY MEANS necessary – enter the coup of January 6th, 2021. Next in intimidation through terrorizing political opposition (death squads; vigilantes); finally they will right the system to remain in power. ... They used their positions to normalize sado-fascism as a normal ideology of their #BananaRepublican party. It isn’t. It isn’t normal: to be a racist. to push pseudo science theories that kill 522K Americans. to pretend to be a political party in a democracy while actively seeking to end democracy to remain in power indefinitely, regardless of the Will of The American People.