Rainbow roundabout

Yesterday I watched the movie Giant Little Ones. Franky and Ballas are best friends and on the school swim team. Franky’s 17th birthday party has quite a bit of underage drinking. Why Franky’s mom chooses to not be home that evening is a puzzle. Franky is drunk enough that he doesn’t end up in bed with his girlfriend as intended, but instead with Ballas. The next morning Ballas wants nothing to do with Franky. Part of the reason is homophobia. Was this a sign of sexual orientation or just some teenage experimentation? Another part of the story is Franky’s father, who, after several years of marriage and two kids, fell in love with a man, came out as gay, and left the marriage. Yeah, there’s some friction there. As the parents are trying to get the boys to renew their friendship it is only the gay man who wants to talk about the reasons behind the estrangement. But the other parents don’t want to complicate the discussion. During the opening credits there were the list of funding sources, which included this arts agency in Canada and that film agency in Ontario. During one of the scenes in a classroom I saw two maps on the wall, one of Canada, one that included southwest Ontario (the part across the Detroit River). I wondered where it was filmed. At one point Franky visit’s his father’s apartment and we get a view out the window of bridges crossing a sizable river. That view wasn’t held very long. However, it was enough for me to conclude we were in either Sault Ste. Marie or Sarnia. The closing credits said filmed in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. Spoiler alert: The movie does not end with Franky and Ballas busting out of the closet and into each other’s arms. Several characters have already shown that whether Franky or Ballas are gay is not a big deal – though there is still homophobia in the school. The message is more sometimes it takes a while to figure out one’s orientation. One of Franky’s friends is a transgender boy. He is wearing a strap-on manhood and wants Franky to help him figure out if he’s got a good product, and part of doing that is seeing what Franky has. It is good the movie explores the issue. On Sunday while going out to pick up my lunch I’ve been listening to the NPR show Freakenomics. The show yesterday was all about the advantages of traffic roundabouts over signaled intersections. I’ll let you find the episode and listen (or read the transcript). During the program they spoke to the president of the Roundabout Appreciation Society of the UK. He said the center of the roundabout can contain anything people want to put there. His group gives out awards for best roundabouts and features a calendar of them. One of the international awards went to the Braddon roundabout in Canberra, Australia. The prominent feature is the circle has been painted with rainbow colors. In the center is a flagpole with a rainbow flag. It was done to celebrate Canberra citizens approving marriage equality. More photos here. The ship stuck in the Suez Canal is free! Though this ship appears to be moving slowly through the canal other ships – a full parade of them – are now making their way through the canal. It could be a week or more to get through the backlog. The website vesselfinder will show you where this ship – and all the others – are.

Anonymity remains the kleptocrat’s asymmetric advantage

Michigan Radio News reported over the last couple days that the rate of rise of COVID cases in Michigan is now third in the nation behind New York and New Jersey. A year ago in March Michigan was fourth, but dropped in the rankings as the virus hit hard in other states. We’re back up there. Today I downloaded the Michigan data. The number of new cases per day this past week was much higher than the previous week. The two weeks in middle March were both revised upwards. The peaks in previous weeks: 3/1/21 – 1878 3/10/21 – 2516 3/15/21 – 3534 3/22/21 – 4896 This number of new cases per day in Michigan is now about half of the peak in early November. Back then the case count jumped from about 4200 to 9700 in just two weeks. There is good news in the number of deaths per day. That has not risen. It has stayed below 25 a day for the last five weeks and has mostly been in the 10-20 range. One big reason for this new increase is Governor Gretchen Whitmer lifted some restrictions back in February, such as indoor dining. More have been lifted since then. A big reason why she did it was an attempt to pacify the GOP controlled state legislature – which didn’t work. The legislature has been sending her bills that tie the release of federal relief aid to Whitmer giving up her emergency powers. Those she has vetoed. They have been rejecting her nominees to government positions. She is resubmitting them. They’re at a standoff. Back in 2018 Michigan voters elected Whitmer as governor, Dana Nessel as Attorney General, and Jocelyn Benson as Secretary of State. This was the first time all three statewide offices went to female Democrats. All three are up for reelection in 2022. Brainwrap of the Daily Kos community reported the Michigan GOP has started calling them the “three witches” saying the GOP needs to make sure they burn at the stake. The GOP in the Michigan legislature is working on their own voter suppression laws, working around the details of the voter rights amendment approved two years ago. Even as details, they can be onerous, such as requiring IDs for mail-in ballots and limiting the locations of drop-boxes to inside polling places. Of course, Whitmer will veto them. The GOP is starting to work on the alternate plan. If there are 340,000 signatures on a petition the legislature can approve the measure instead of having it go to the voters. In this case the governor’s signature is not needed and she cannot veto it. Can the GOP get 340,000 anti-voting signatures? They did it once for an anti-abortion measure by gathering signatures in churches. Reaching that goal again may depend on whether GOP voters are as anti-democracy as the politicians or whether they still believe in fairness. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed where we are with the virus and vaccine. Sumner mentioned Michigan as being right up there with rising cases. The good news is that over a third of adults in America have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Doses are being administered at the rate of 2.5 million a day. The bad news is over two thirds of the population, or about 80% of adults, need to be vaccinated to slow and stop the spread of the virus. Add to that over 40% of Republicans are still saying no to the vaccine. That may prevent us from getting to the needed level of immunity. The virus is still winning. Sumner also discussed Joe Biden’s first press conference. One would think with all the muttering by the press that Biden hadn’t done a press conference yet that the press would have been better prepared when Biden agreed to do one. One would also think the press would ask questions that matter to a great number of people. So, no questions about the pandemic.

As Chuck Todd noted after the event, in a rare moment of either wisdom or plain honesty, there were no questions about COVID, because the press corps couldn't think of a negative thing to say about Biden's handling of COVID. And the press corps only asks questions that it can frame in a negative way.

There were questions about the crisis at the border. Their interest came...

as The Washington Post reports, because reporters were following a right-wing frame that pretends that Biden has thrown open the border, allowing in a flood of new immigrants. And no set of statistics showing that the current increase is less than the seasonal increase of past years is allowed to get in the way of that frame. Again and again reporters asked questions that boiled down to claims that because Biden was seen as a decent person who wouldn’t treat children with callous brutality, it’s encouraging children to seek something better than the lives they have. Written into this script was an apparent expectation that Biden would either spurn the idea of being decent to children (he didn’t) and that children hoping to enter the United States is a bad thing (it’s not). Instead, Biden made it clear that if an unaccompanied child shows up at the border, America will, shockingly, take them in and provide decent food and shelter while looking for the appropriate next step.

Biden was most passionate about voting rights, saying the GOP strategy to suppress voting as “sick.” He also talked about ending the filibuster. But that didn’t seem like news. Jon Hansen of the TV show The Jam tweeted about the ship stuck in the Suez Canal with a video:

The former traffic reporter in me couldn’t resist giving you a Suez Canal traffic update...

Lexi Alexander tweeted:

Watching news on the Suez crisis in diff languages. The West is all jokes & market speculations. To hear about seafarers stuck after being away for a year, ships not carrying enough provisions, risks to the region due to rising oil & gas prices, you have to watch news in Arabic.

On Saturdays I listen to the NPR show Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me! as I load the dishwasher and do other housecleaning chores. The guest on this week’s show is Kemp Powers who wrote the play One Night in Miami and co-directed the new Pixar animation Soul. Powers told the story of a black man, working as a driver for Pixar, got suspicious of all the black people he was driving to the white Pixar offices. The audio is ten minutes. Here’s a Twitter thread that’s been in my browser tabs for three months now. This thread is from Casey Michel, author of American Kleptocracy. The thread links to an article in the New Republic for more detail. Kleptocracy is rule by theft. The nasty guy and his backers have been very good at it. They demolished America’s legacy of anti-corrption leadership.

It's tough to try to keep track of all the ways Trump decimated U.S. anti-corruption leadership. But it's clear he'll have the most corrupt presidential legacy since Warren Harding and Teapot Dome, and leaves behind an Augean stables–size mess for the rest of us to clean up.

The nation’s response to Nixon shifted the global tide in corruption. Biden needs to make that happen again.

Biden's administration should build out an entirely new anti-kleptocracy paradigm in the U.S.—by ending anonymity wherever it can. End it in real estate. End it in hedge funds. End it in private equity. End it in trusts. End it in art and auction markets. End as much as it can. Anonymity remains the kleptocrat’s asymmetric advantage. Which means that transparency is the best weapon in the American arsenal. And if these reforms aren't implemented in the here and now under Biden, we might not get another chance.

I occasionally listen to Radiolab podcasts. I tend not to listen to them at the time they’re posted. The one I listened to today is from December. It is titled The Ashes on the lawn. This one looked back to a previous pandemic with an indifferent government. The question is when the situation is dire and nothing seems to work, how do we make change? Yes, this was the AIDS epidemic in 1990. Larry Kramer and his ACT UP organization were trying to get the government’s and media’s attention because gay men were dying. This is the story of some of their protests. Dave’s lover Warren had died of AIDS. Dave and several others marched to the White House and threw the ashes of their lovers through the fence on to the White House lawn. They were saying look, your inaction has killed. A great deal of the ashes came back in their faces. It was a profoundly moving moment. And it made very little difference in getting attention. The story of the AIDS quilt is well known. Organizers said any quilt panels they had by September 15 would a month later be taken to Washington and displayed on the National Mall. Most of the panels they got from gay men were filled with anger. In the last few days they received 800 more. The panels came from across America. They were from mothers who had lost sons to AIDS. These were mothers who could not tell their neighbors and church sewing clubs how their sons had died. The panels were decorated with love and beauty. It was this grief of these mothers that prompted the passage of the Ryan White act a few years later. A hero of today’s pandemic is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has the same job now as he did in 1989, the director of the National Institute of Health. He was a part of this Radiolab episode to talk about what happened 30 years before. Larry Kramer had a big issue with the NIH. Drugs to treat AIDS were not being approved with the urgency in which they were needed. Clinical trials did not include a diverse population so drugs were only approved for white gay men. Kramer wrote Fauci a very threatening letter. In contrast to many government officials Fauci reached out to Kramer. There were soon dinner parties that included Fauci and people of ACT UP. After a while the ACT UP people realized all they were getting from Fauci were excuses – sorry, I can’t budge senior management. They finally told him we’re going to protest your building in two months if you can’t change minds. The protests at the NIH happened, including colorful smoke bombs and burning Fauci in effigy (photos here). And changes happened – a little more quickly.

Jim Crow returning

Lauren Floyd of Daily Kos reported on the new voter suppression law in Georgia. I didn’t follow the whole story, though I think it started as a two page bill, then at the last minute the GOP added another 90 pages of voter restrictions. It was promptly approved by the state House, dashed to the Senate and promptly approved, then dashed to the governor, who signed it in a closed door ceremony. I think I got this part right: Democrat Rep. Park Cannon demanded to be let in to observe (though since she is a black woman I doubt she would have observed quietly). Capitol police arrested her on something like interfering with government business. Jen Hayden of Kos showed an image of that closed door signing ceremony. Gov. Brian Kemp is flanked by six white men. They made sure to leave space so that over Kemp’s head there is a clear view of a painting. The painting is of Calloway Plantation, which was notorious in how it treated its slaves. When one tours the place today little is mentioned of how the slaves were treated and almost nothing is said about the jail that was built to hold unruly slaves. That ceremony is the image of Jim Crow returning. Stacey Abrams had a few things to say about this bill. A couple years ago Abrams was cheated out of being Georgia’s governor by Brian Kemp. Before and since she has been a strong advocate for black voting rights. Floyd also wrote about attempts to change policies around housing for black people. One example is in Evanston, Illinois. The tax office is now going out to homeowners behind on their property taxes rather than simply sending notices that might not be understood by seniors with dementia. The City Council has also approved money for longtime residents to help buy or renovate houses, or pay mortgage bills. They announced the money isn’t “reparations” for slavery, but to compensate for discrepancy in housing. Cook County, IL, another example, is making a big effort to make homeowners are aware of ways to reduce their property tax bills. In one case to help a woman with dementia they tracked down a son living in Mississippi. The county is also becoming aware of the costs of throwing people into the street over small tax bills that have been unpaid. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the Brookings Institute introduced a series of papers on the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US.

The conclusion of those researchers: “The United States … could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy ...” And it could have done so while spending billions of dollars less. The researchers aren’t actually claiming that Trump is responsible for over 4 out of every 5 deaths, because they’re projecting that 400,000 lives saved against an expected total for the pandemic—which they believe will end up being around 670,000 lives lost. Had Trump taken prompt action, they believe the total would have been under 300,000. What would have made this difference? All the things Trump failed to do...

The cost in lives is horrible, but there is also the cost in dollars. The various rescue acts have cost more than $5 trillion. And that doesn’t count the costs to those people and businesses who couldn’t get that aid. Dr. Rachel Levine has been confirmed by the Senate to be the assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Service. It’s a really big deal because Levine is the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to be a federal official. A big bit of economic news this week is the huge container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal since Wednesday. It could be days or weeks before it gets unstuck. Yes, huge – a quarter mile long and able to carry more than 20,000 twenty-foot shipping containers. AKALib of the Kos community wrote about the ship, how it got stuck, that it is costing world trade $400 million an hour, and what might be involved in getting it unstuck. There are also photos showing diggers and dozers compared to the size of the ship. Jen Hayden of Kos reported on the effects of the stuck ship is having on the world economy. This ship is making the Canal unusable and about 10% of world trade usually goes through it. So buy an extra pack of toilet paper (but don’t hoard!). Hayden also included several examples of what Twitter is good at – creating images and short videos as jokes on the situation. Commenters added several more. Dan Kois of Slate reported on solutions kids have offered on how to free the ship. My favorite is by Henry, age 8:

They need to start with blowing up the land that the boat is stuck on, without hurting the boat. Like little explosions. The next thing they need are a bunch of helicopters with winches on the bottom. They should attach lines to the front and the back of the boat to the helicopters. Then the helicopters will fly in opposite directions—just a little—so the boat turns free. Oh. First you should rescue the people. Always rescue the people first.

Though the one by Lyra, age 15, is pretty good too.

I think they should force everyone in the boat to undergo intense, rigorous training until one of them develops psychic powers from the stress, and then he’ll snap and levitate the boat out. I can’t think of any possible way that would backfire.

In a column written more than a quarter century ago Molly Ivens (as quoted by Bill in Portland, Maine in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos) seems distressingly accurate for a time with two big mass shootings. Here’s a bit of it.

I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don't know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to have the power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

In another Cheers and Jeers column, Bill in Portland, Maine offers a few bits of late night commentary.

President Biden just got a nice shot in the arm. You know how he said he hoped to get 100-million Americans vaccinated by the end of his first hundred days in office? He beat that deadline by six weeks. Isn’t it amazing what you can do when you don’t put Jared in charge? —Jimmy Kimmel According to a new report, since President Biden took office CNN has lost 45 percent of its prime time audience to its biggest competitor: a good night's sleep. —Seth Meyers The Suez Canal is blocked after a giant container ship got stuck, blocking nearly the entire width of the canal. I get it: after a year of quarantine, nothing fits anymore. They should have put that ship into their stretchy canal—you know, the one that looks like denim but gives? —Stephen Colbert