This Is Not What a Healthy Democracy Looks Like
Everything you need to know in 7 minutes: D.C. braces for MAGA violence … Cooper calls up the National Guard … Wake shells out cash to get kids in classrooms …
Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021
Happy Hump Day, y’all.
I went to bed before the Georgia Senate races were called. (Sorry.) But with about 95% in, the NYT’s needle showed Raphael Warnock (almost certainly) and Jon Ossoff (probably) pulling off upsets. So while this might be a bad day for democracy (read on), it might also be a very good day for Democrats.
Or I’ll wake up to find the needle was wrong.
Weather: Partly cloudy, high of 48.
Today’s Number: 30,000
Estimated non-COVID excess deaths in the United States between March and Oct. 3, 2020, according to a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.
What it means: A lot more people than usual died from drugs and booze.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds what would have occurred if official COVID deaths were combined with a normal number of deaths from other causes. The demographic and time patterns of the non-COVID excess deaths (NCEDs) point to deaths of despair rather than an undercount of COVID deaths. The flow of NCEDs increased steadily from March to June and then plateaued. They were disproportionately experienced by working-aged men, including men as young as aged 15 to 24.
+TODAY’S TOP 3
1. This Is Not a Healthy Democracy
These are facts:
Joe Biden won decisively.
Donald Trump had two months to offer evidence of election fraud. He has failed.
There are no “contested” states.
Yet as many as half of the Republicans in today’s joint session of Congress — including at least five from North Carolina, and maybe Thom Tillis — will object to Biden’s victory. They won’t stop Biden from becoming president. But they can force hours of “debate” as tens of thousands of Stop the Steal marchers amass outside and D.C. braces for violence.
Tl;dr: This is not a good day for democracy.
For subscribers: “I’m thinking it will be literal war.” At the link, I took a deep dive into what today’s fiasco portends for the Republican Party and the country. You’ll want to read it. (At least I hope so; I spent most of yesterday writing it.) If you’re not yet a member, click the little red rectangle. If you’d like to subscribe but money’s tight, email me. (PRIMER, sub. req.)
2. Wake Will Pay Subs Up to $30 a Day More to Teach During a Pandemic
Wake County’s school board really wants middle and high school kids in classrooms on Jan. 20 — actually, one week in classrooms, two weeks online, which is all state rules allow. However:
Problem 1: COVID cases are surging, educator vaccines could be months away, and already more than 800 teachers were calling out every day in December. Meanwhile, according to a school system survey, a third of Wake’s substitutes aren’t keen on hanging out in kiddo germ factories for $80–$103 a day. (That’s it? Really?!)
Solution 1: Pay subs more. The school board approved a $2.1 million plan to pay substitutes who work up to 14 days a month an extra $425, or 30 bucks a day. (N&O, WRAL)
Problem 2: Elementary schools will go fully in-person. But unlike PreK-3 classrooms, there are no class-size restrictions for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, so you could have 28 or 29 kids packed in like non-social-distancing sardines.
Solution 2: “Superintendent Cathy Moore said she’ll report back next week on the resources it would take to keep class sizes at around 20 students while still offering daily in-person classes for those two grade levels.” (N&O)
Here’s the thing: Remote learning is bad for a lot of students. Grades are down. Attendance is down. Remote instruction exacerbates learning disparities. It keeps kids isolated and depressed. And I imagine that after a year, it annoys the hell out of parents.
Here’s the other thing: Teachers don’t have a death wish. There haven’t been any known cases of child-to-teacher transmission in North Carolina, but teachers can pass COVID to other teachers — and support staff, and other adults they encounter. There’s a reason so many of us are working at home.
—> RELATED: Some DPS workers could see the county’s new $15/hour minimum wage made retroactive to July. The county just has to figure out how to pay for it. (N&O)
3. Cooper Mobilizes National Guard to Distribute COVID Vaccine
On the whole, the country hasn’t done a great job getting vaccines into people’s arms. North Carolina has one of the lowest rates of vaccine administrations in the country. So Governor Cooper called up 60 Guard members to help get things going.
“About 50 Guard members will be operational in the coming days, officials said. Some will handle logistics planning or command and control center support, while others will be on vaccination teams available to support state efforts.” (WRAL)
“As of Tuesday, the CDC said North Carolina had 498,450 doses delivered and had administered 121,881.”
+NEED TO KNOW
—> Local & State
For the fourth straight day, North Carolina COVID hospitalizations hit a record high. (N&O)
North Carolina’s unemployment rate is 6.2%, half a point lower than the national rate. In the Durham-Chapel Hill metro, it’s 5.2%, the lowest in the state. (ABC11)
North Carolina’s food stamp benefits will increase by 15% for the next six months. (WRAL)
A North Carolina soldier reported being sexually assaulted before she was found dead in her barracks in Texas on New Year’s Eve. (N&O)
The number of people in North Carolina’s county jails has declined during the pandemic, but the ones who are there are staying longer. (Policy Watch)
A joint venture including a Raleigh real-estate firm bought a Hillsborough Street parking lot — between West and Edenton — for $700,000 and plans to eventually build some sort of up-to-12-story high-rise. (TBJ, sub. req.)
Raleigh’s blood center is asking anyone who has recovered from COVID to donate convalescent plasma. (ABC11)
Two people and a dog died in an East Durham house fire caused by an electric space heater that sparked flammable materials. (ABC11, N&O)
An angry Zaxby’s customer threatened to shoot a store employee in Hickory. (N&O)
—> Nation & World
The Kenosha cop who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times won’t face charges. Shocking. (WaPo)
US intelligence agencies said the ongoing hack of government systems “likely” came from Russia, confirming what everyone (except Donald Trump) already knew. (NYT)
One in 50 people in England has been infected by COVID. (NYT)
The Chinese government arrested 50 pro-democracy lawmakers and activists for selecting candidates for a legislative election, which ran afoul of a national security law. (BBC)
The Pennsylvania state Senate refused to seat a Democrat — whose election has been certified by the state — because his Republican opponent filed a lawsuit to overturn the result. (CNN)
Due to a COVID surge, Los Angeles medics have been instructed to ration oxygen and not to transport to a hospital cardiac patients whose survival is “unlikely.” (NYT)
Buzzfeed News filed 58 FOIA lawsuits against the Trump administration, more than any other in the country. (Buzzfeed)
—> Science & Tech
Scientists are studying whether they can cut doses of the Moderna vaccine in half, thus doubling the supply. (NYT)
Trump signed an executive order blocking transactions with eight Chinese apps, including WeChatPay and Alipay. (The Verge)
—> Culture & Entertainment
Michael Keaton is returning to the role of Batman but only for one film — The Flash, which isn’t a Batman movie. (CNN)
Tanya Roberts, the actress who was prematurely announced dead on Sunday, died for real on Monday night. (AV Club)
American Airlines will no longer allow emotional support animals on flights. (CNN)
Jodie Whittaker might leave Doctor Who after the next season. (AV Club)
Jeopardy! is airing Alex Trebek’s final episodes this week. (CNN)
+WHAT I’M READING
1. “Statement of Congressman Jamie Raskin and Sarah Bloom Raskin on the Remarkable Life of Tommy Raskin”
On January 30, 1995, Thomas Bloom Raskin was born to ecstatic parents who saw him enter the world like a blue-eyed cherub, a little angel. Tommy grew up as a strikingly beautiful curly-haired madcap boy beaming with laughter and charm, making mischief, kicking the soccer ball in the goal, acting out scenes from To Kill A Mockingbird with his little sister in his father’s constitutional law class, teaching other children the names of all the Justices on the Supreme Court, hugging strangers on the street, teaching our dogs foreign languages, running up and down the aisle on airplanes giving people high fives, playing jazz piano like a blues great from Bourbon Street, and at 12 writing a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected). …
At Amherst College, he majored in history, helped lead the Amherst Political Union, intellectually discredited the egregious Dinesh D’Souza who turned to pathetic insults when Tommy destroyed his argument from the audience with a simple question (even before D’Souza was soon to be convicted of federal campaign finance crimes), won the Kellogg Prize, created and performed one-act plays with his social dorm mates, and wrote a compelling senior thesis on the intellectual history of the animal rights movement. Spending his summers voraciously reading and soaking up all the wisdom to be had at his eclectic self-procured internships at the CATO Institute with Doug Bandow, J Street, the Institute for Policy Studies, ARC of Montgomery, Compassion Over Killing, and for Professor Frank Couvares, Tommy became an anti-war activist, a badass autodidact moral philosopher and progressive humanist libertarian, and a passionate vegan who composed imperishable, knock-your-socks-off poetry linking systematic animal cruelty and exploitation to militarism and war culture. He recruited gently and lovingly — but supremely effectively — dozens and dozens of people, including his parents, to the practice of not eating animals, and it will be hard to find anyone his age who has turned more carnivores into vegans than him. …
Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless “disease called depression,” as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.
(Please — please — read to the end.)