Stabbed In The Back

Political Cartoon is by Christopher Weyant in The Boston Globe.
 

Don't Let The Talk About "Breakthrough Case" Fool You

There has been a lot of talk in the media lately about "breakthrough cases" of COVID-19 -- cases where a vaccinated person contracted the virus. Sadly, even the normally sane NBC and MSNBC have been guilty of this, and the right-wing sites have been crowing about it. The impression given is that even the people who have been vaccinated have a good chance of getting COVID-19.

That is pure bullshit! The number is cases where a vaccinated person contracted the disease is incredibly tiny. 

Note the chart above, which uses figures from the CDC and state dashboards. About 99.923% of vaccinated Americans have NOT gotten COVID-19. That means only 0.077% have gotten sick. That is less than one-tenth of one percent!

The vaccines (especially the Pfizer and Modern vaccines) are incredibly effective. And anyone who wants to be safe from the virus, even the Delta variant, should get vaccinated.

Don't let the media scare you into failing to be vaccinated!

Right-Wing Clowns

Political Cartoon is by Bill Day at FloridaPolitics.com.
 

Wealth Inequality Is Bad - Racial Wealth Inequality Is Worse

The United States is more unequal when it comes to wealth and income than any other developed nation, and worse than even some third-world countries. For the economy to flourish, that needs to be fixed. But as bad as the general wealth inequality is, the racial wealth inequality is much worse. 

The following is part of an excellent op-ed by the editorial board of The Washington Post:

Narrowing the U.S. wealth gap in general is important; narrowing the racial wealth gap is urgent. It is not the outcome of impersonal market forces but the legacy of oppressive policy. As a country we have already wasted too many opportunities to tackle it head-on.

It won’t be easy, in part because Supreme Court rulings have limited government’s authority to use overtly race-conscious remedies to address Black economic disadvantage. The court has held, essentially, that such measures can amount to racial discrimination against people who are not Black. This is a bitter irony given that many race-conscious policies that disadvantaged Black people were either not challenged or deemed consistent with the U.S. Constitution over the decades. Still, it is a reality that could preclude measures explicitly for the benefit of Black people.

That includes reparations, which nevertheless merit a study such as the one called for in a pending bill, H.R. 40. Even if general compensation for slavery and segregation could not be feasible, or pass muster under current constitutional law, financial restitution may be available for identifiable victims of specific contemporary injustices, analogous to payments the United States made to those of Japanese ancestry interned during World War II. There needs to be focused attention on such quietly devastating barriers to wealth-building as the prevalence of informal land title among rural Southern Black families, which The Post’s Hannah Dreier and Andrew Ba Tran documented in a recent report. This legacy of Jim Crow has cost many families government disaster relief, and sometimes their property itself.

Meanwhile, the racial wealth gap can and should be addressed through measures that are race-neutral but foreseeably bestow disproportionate benefits on people of color — thus flipping the script on past policies that were officially colorblind but favored Whites. We have mentioned some in previous editorials: direct support for first-time home buyers and for retirement savings, in place of current tax incentives that tilt toward the upper middle class; grants for college tuition in place of loans.

Each low-income child born in the United States could be staked to a federally funded $1,000 “baby bond,” with annual payments, varying by family income, added until age 18, as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and others have advocated. Invested in safe government bonds, the money would accumulate tax-free. It could only be withdrawn for investment in further wealth-building purposes such as education, entrepreneurship or homebuying. An analysis by the financial research firm Morningstar suggests that “baby bonds” could cut the racial wealth gap in half in terms of resources available per child at age 18.

Reform of the country’s current equivalent of a wealth tax — state and local property taxes — could also foster racial equity. Recent research by finance professors Carlos Avenancio-Leon of Indiana University and Troup Howard of the University of Utah has shown that existing systems result in higher property assessment growth rates for homeowners of color relative to similarly situated White homeowners.

Unjustifiably wide though it still is, the Black-White wealth gap is narrower than it was three decades ago: Median Black household wealth was 12 percent of White in 2019, but an even lower 6 percent in 1989. The lesson is that the United States has proved capable of reducing racial wealth inequality — even during a time when it was not consciously trying to do so and, in some respects, was raising new obstacles. Think how much more progress can be achieved if the country actively pursues it.

MAGA Fool

Political Cartoon is by Mike Stanfill at ragingpencils.com.
 

It Was True When He Said It - And It's Still True!

 

The Sad Truth From Steinbeck

 

Religious Less Likely To Believe In Life On Other Planets

 

The Pew Research Center surveyed a national sample of 10,415 adults between June 14th and 24th, and their survey had a 1.5 point margin of error. It showed that religious people are less likely, and non-religious are more likely, to believe that intelligent life exists on other planets.

Zero And Hero

Political Cartoon is by Michael deAdder in The Washington Post.
 

Most Americans Would Support A Vaccination Mandate

 

The charts above are from The COVID States Project. They questioned a national sample of 20,669 adults between June 9th and July 7th. Because of the large sample, the margin of error would be very small.

Republicans are making a big deal out of encouraging people to not get vaccinated for the Coronavirus. They want people to think it's a matter of freedom of choice.

But most of the public are not buying their argument. A clear and substantial majority of them (64%) would support a mandate that all people be vaccinated.

It's Greek To Me

Political Cartoon is by Gary Huck at huckkonopackicartoons.com.
 

The Virus Is Surging In Texas, And Gov. Abbott Is The Reason

One of the bigger lies that Donald Trump told was that the Coronavirus would die out once the hot weather of summer arrived. It didn't.

The virus got worse last summer, and in many states, that is happening again -- especially in red states.

One of the states where the virus is surging again is Texas. It's happening because Gov. Abbott played politics with the virus instead of putting public safety first.

Now he is taking another page from the Trump playbook. He is blaming immigrants for the surge.

That is ridiculous. If Abbott wanted to see the person most responsible for the surge, all he has to do is look in the mirror.

Here is what Steve Vladeck has to say about it at MSNBC.com:

On Wednesday, Texas reported more than 10,000 new Covid-19 cases — the highest one-day total for the nation’s second-largest state since Feb. 9. On the same day, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a new executive order that, he claimed, would help counter the surge. 

Abbott’s order restricts the “ground transportation of migrants who pose a risk of carrying COVID-19 into Texas communities” by authorizing Texas law enforcement officers to “stop any vehicle upon reasonable suspicion” of violating the executive order.

The accompanying news release did not leave the link between the two issues to readers’ imaginations: “The dramatic rise in unlawful border crossings has also led to a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases among unlawful migrants who have made their way into our state,” Abbott was quoted as saying, “and we must do more to protect Texans from this virus and reduce the burden on our communities.”

Abbott’s executive order is, at least publicly, meant to tie Texas’s Covid surge to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. In a second release issued Thursday, Abbott was even more direct: “The current crisis at our southern border, including the overcrowding of immigration facilities and the devastating spread of COVID-19 that the influx of non-citizens is causing, is entirely the creation of the Biden Administration and its failed immigration policies.”

There are at least three problems here. First, the actual executive order that he signed doesn’t do anything like what the news release claims it does. Second, what little it does do would, if ever enforced, be equal parts unlawful and ineffective. Third, and most significantly, it’s a transparently cynical effort from Abbott to deflect attention away from his responsibility for the renewed surge of Covid cases in Texas — a state in which local governments, public schools and universities are all prohibited from imposing mask mandates or, as of Thursday, requiring vaccinations.

Simply put, if Abbott is looking for someone to blame for Texas’s latest Covid surge, it might behoove him to find a mirror.

The executive order that Abbott actually signed does not, in fact, authorize all Texas law enforcement officers to stop any individual suspected of being an undocumented immigrant carrying Covid-19 anywhere in the state. Rather, the order is directed solely at the transportation of undocumented immigrants from federal immigration facilities to shelters, hospitals and other places where they can be safely housed while their fate is determined. (That includes being moved for Covid testing.)

Indeed, the order does not prevent federal law enforcement officers themselves from moving these people from immigration facilities to other locations; it merely prevents other federal actors, or private parties, including those operating under government contracts, from doing so.

That’s a big deal for charities and other nongovernmental organizations currently assisting the Biden administration along the Texas-Mexico border. But contra the clear insinuation of Abbott’s news release, it’s not open season for racial profiling on Texas roadways.

Experts?

Political Cartoon is by Ed Hall at Artizans.com.
 

We Must Talk About Poverty