Biden's bid for those living on edge

            Build Back Better. It's a great handle for bridges, viaducts and sewer lines.

            But, oh, my -- how inadequate a name for legislation that's more complex and nuanced, focused on survival – personal, planetary.

            No wonder Joe Manchin says he can't sell it to the people of West Virginia. By and large, the news media can't explain it, either. Or they can't spare the time or space.

            We've just come through a stretch in which news gatherers performed heroically in investigating the moral rot and self-dealing of the Trump administration.

            Now we have a president who stands for something other than his claim to power. Joe Biden is putting his presidency on the line in the quest to help people who need it, not CEOs, not mega corporations, and too many in the news media seem to have lost touch with what news requires.

            Bottom line: Because of inadequate coverage, too few people know what Biden is pushing beyond masks and COVID shots.

            All they know is that the Democrats want to spend a lot of money on -- who knows? On "social spending." Trillions.

            They know Biden has "failed" to pass his legislation by the end of the year, as if the positioning of the sun and stars should have any bearing on the fate of complex, history-making legislation.

            They assume it is dead because the clock strikes '22 and one pivotal Democrat continues to hold out. More about that in a moment.

            The point here, though, is as Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over 'till it's over."

            First, what's in that "social spending"? The most important component is an extension of the child tax credit that was expanded dramatically in the stimulus bill approved early on. 

            Manchin has said he opposed it because he feared parents would use it on drugs. That's you, mom and pop, that he suspects, according to NBC News' reporting of his "private" conversations with Democrats.

            The child tax credit means payments, based on income and eligibility, of up to $300 per month for each child under age 6 and $250 per month for each child from 6 to 18.

            We are talking about 4.1 million children, many lifted out of poverty for the first time, and an economic infusion of $19.3 billion into local economies.

            Next, the legislation would dramatically ramp up federal assistance to child care to make it more affordable and more available. If we want parents working, they need to have a place for their children.

            This is one of the most pressing issues of the 21^st century, and one that gets almost no attention from some news outlets.

            The bill passed by the House would limit child care costs to 7 percent of income for lower- and middle-income families.

            In the same vein, the legislation would pay for universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds and invest in the infrastructure to make it happen.

            The legislation would do dozens of things to improve health coverage through Medicaid and expansion of the Affordable Care Act. It would mean health coverage for millions more Americans, and such improvements as Medicare covering hearing screenings and the capping of high-dollar drugs like insulin.

            People who see the complex process as a zero-sum game – "Joe Manchin blew it up" -- don't know that Manchin has said he supports the provisions for universal prekindergarten and the expansion of services under the Affordable Care Act. He also supports some if not all of the investments aimed at fighting climate change.

            Without question, there is wiggle room there, and Biden is going to probe and push to find out what in this historic bill can make it to his desk.

            As much as Democrats cuss Manchin, and I am one of them, let's remember who the real agents of obstruction are.

            Remember how Trump & Sons Demolition Inc. sought to destroy the Affordable Care Act without any alternative in mind. Remember the tax cuts that barely benefitted the average American but paid off royally for the highest incomes and giant corporations. Know that the ACA has come back with a roar under Biden's guidance.

            Manchin deserves credit for voting against both GOP efforts – unnecessary tax cuts and dynamiting the ACA -- frustrating a furious Trump, who saw the conservative Democrat from West Virginia as a potential foil.

            Yes, the fury of people who see the humanitarian needs addressed by the Democrats' initiative should be directly focused on the Republican Party. Biden's objective, toward a more just and humane society, should be to elect more of those who believe in said goals and fewer in Congress whose consuming goal is to comfort the most comfortable.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com

 

GOP's laughable 'race-blind' claim

            In biology, surface distinctions among human beings barely count.

            Regardless of skin color, we all share 99.9 percent of our genetic code with one another.

            Biologically, race is an artifice, a distinction without a distinction.

            Try telling that, however, to the Republican Party's computers.

            They have an amazing ability to identify surface distinctions.

            Over the past decade, Texas saw its population jump by 4 million. Ninety-five percent of that growth was people of color, particularly Latinos.

            Ah, but thanks to the latest in demographic identification technology, new congressional districts drawn up by the majority party don't reflect that. Instead, they bolster gringo power. This includes two newborn white-majority congressional districts.

            That's why the Biden administration is suing. These gerrymandered districts will negate people's political power based on an artifice.

            "Decade after decade, courts have found that Texas has enacted redistricting plans that deliberately dilute the voting strength of Latino and Black voters," said Associate U.S. Attorney General Vinita Gupta.

            Following a practice that draws a direct line to Jim Crow, new maps pack Blacks and Latinos into contorted districts to preserve safe seats for Republicans. In some cases, Republican-drawn maps put candidates of color in the same district.

            In this way, Republicans -- because they can -- remove people's power to choose who will govern them and gives that choice to those who govern.

            News flash: Racially discriminatory redistricting remains illegal, even though a right-tilting Supreme Court in 2013 gutted provisions of the Voting Rights Act that required Justice Department or court preapproval of such changes.

            Let's hope that the aggrieved get a fair trial. It's more likely, however, that partisanship will prevail.

            More importantly, let's hope Congress passes the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would stop partisan gambits that undermine the power of the people. Even Sen. Joe "The Recalcitrant" Manchin supports ending gerrymandering.

            In an off-year election, the party out of power in Washington typically makes gains. If the Republicans make gains that flip the U.S. House in 2022, that phenomenon will be a factor. A bigger one, however, will be Republican computers used to eviscerate the political power of minorities.

            In several states, voters have put a stop to politically contrived districts. They have instituted bipartisan redistricting commissions. Colorado did, to the consternation of majority Dems who could have consigned minority Republicans to shacks in the wilderness. Fairness ruled instead.

            Contrast this with red states in the South where the partisan dimension has only been ratcheted up since the Supreme Court brutalized the Voting Rights Act, and pumped up more after Trump's Big Lie bullying about the election he lost.

            Whether the matter is redistricting or "ballot security" measures that the courts repeatedly have ruled to have marginalized people at the margins, these measures are hardly "race-blind," as Republicans claim.

            They are designed to benefit a largely homogenous, mostly white power center that is threatened by a world of difference.

            In North Carolina, the new Republican plan eviscerates the district of former Congressional Black Caucus chairman Rep. Paul Butterfield, who has chosen retirement. Meanwhile The New York Times reports that the new districts threaten the re-elections of four state senators, five state representatives, and several county officials, all African-American.

            Civil rights groups are suing North Carolina. May the Constitution prevail – the one that provides for equal treatment under the law.

            Factor all these things together, and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams is right when she says, "What we are facing now is a very real and acute case of democratic subversion."

            Of course, the "we" in her statement isn't inclusive of all, only those with a particular surface distinction.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.  

 

The flag of the whiny anti-masker

            Foes of masks, the Denver Post reported, "waved American flags, cheered and whistled" at the marathon school board meeting. Then a newly reconstituted, newly partisan board sided with them.

            Left out of the discussion: administrators charged with keeping children, teachers and staff safe.

            It had been impressive for quite some time that in Douglas County, a starchy Republican fortress south of Denver, the school district had boldly required masks at school despite the bleating by foes primed for battle by Fox News.

            That policy was explained politely by the superintendent as the best way to keep people healthy and in school.

            Back when the pandemic first roared in and school went remote, Republicans said in-person classes were imperative.

            Now students are back. That merits, say policymakers not cowed by MAGA mentality, the simple and demonstrable precaution of face coverings.

            From the strain of civility cultivated in the Trump era, mask opponents have treated board members and administrators backing masks with the kind of wrath reserved for child molesters.

            It's shameful. In a pandemic, it's also stupid.

            It's part of the equation by which this nation, with 200 million of us now vaccinated, still deals with exceptionally high rates of infection.

            But enough about basic prevention. Let's talk about those American flags.

            We've heard anti-maskers address this matter as one of freedom and personal choice. The only problem with either claim is the matter of when one's expression of freedom harms others.

            No one can trace the phrase, "Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins." It doesn't matter. The truth and the responsibility inherent are as plain as that nose on your face and mine.

            In a free country, by anti-maskers' standard of "freedom," speed limits would not exist. Traffic lights would be optional.

            By these standards on campus, Junior could show up in second period with his personal pizza and wolf it down while classmates salivated. And how about a six-pack? It's a matter of personal liberty.

            We don't want Junior to be inconvenienced, even if he might spread a disease that may infect a classmate and the classmate's family.

            But you say Junior's not sick. One, he doesn't know that. Two, a little science-based inconvenience might keep him that way.

            I teach on a college campus. My students have been back in classrooms since summer session. When we are inside we are masked. (Next semester our system requires that all are vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID.)

            Wearing a mask is a hassle, but you wouldn't guess it from my students' comportment. They have embraced it as the price of being there.

            I've seen the same embrace in the lively steps of little ones at the supermarket wearing their own masks at the side of caring and careful parents.

            Once again, we are in a pandemic. We do not require this apparel out of whim. I taught remotely via Zoom. Though it was workable, one thing that was hard to do was be one-on-one with students.

            When masked, a student and I can sit down a couple of feet apart and address individual needs with less fear of infection.

            I am vaccinated. I am boosted. The science says that if I get COVID-19 it will be relatively minor, and the chance of getting it is remote. I could conceivably go about my business without a mask, but I wear one in whatever indoor setting I visit.

            I wear it for two important motivations: (1) me; (2) others.

            Those who think of the American experience as simply about "me" haven't read about what it took to be "us." If it were all about "me," not one volunteer would have climbed into the amphibious crafts that assaulted the Normandy beaches or air-dropped into the Ardennes Forest. They sacrificed for all. The trudged into battle encumbered by a lot more than a piece of cloth.

            What a hill on which to place one's banner, the battle against a simple face covering. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes of "the transformation of American conservatism – the movement that complains about 'liberal snowflakes' – into a collection of malignant whiners."

            The flag of the whiny anti-masker isn't one with 50 stars and 13 stripes. His flag has one star, and he is it.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

America, here are your bomb-throwers

             "Don't worry. There's plenty that would love to take you off the face of the f-cking earth. Come and get it, bitch. You f-cking Muslim piece of sh-t, you jihadist.

            "You will not live much longer, bitch."

            No, that wasn't Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert calling Rep. Ilhan Omar to explain herself better. It's just one of Boebert's biggest fans on the phone.

            What the Colorado congresswoman, whose mouth is set on "semiauto," says daily is separated from that dangerous caller only by degrees.

            Boebert has faced rightful outrage – from everyone except GOP leaders – for having been caught on tape fabricating more than once an account about being in an elevator with Omar and telling others that since the Minnesota Democrat "doesn't have a backpack," passengers can rest easy.

            It's a joke. Get it? No bomb. Get it?

            A real side-splitter, celebrated with guffaws by a certifiable MAGA audience.

            A liar. A racist. A delight to her audience. Boebert knows how best to up her odds for party leadership.

            The Denver Post, which has denounced Boebert's torch-bearing rhetoric before, said that since her party won't apologize for what she said, it would.

            Republicans can disagree with Ilhan Omar's politics, but whatever she says is all in tones and terms of her job of deliberative representation in the U.S. House.

            In terms of dignity and intellectual heft, if Omar, Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene were in fact in an elevator together, Omar would be the only one tall enough to reach the buttons.

            What is the function of these bomb-throwers in Washington? Much like Donald Trump's was.

            Trump set this tone. Boebert and Greene believe they are giving the people what they want.

            Boebert's anti-Muslim slur fits hand in glove with Trump's body of work, slurring people of color with his first few words at the bottom on his golden escalator as he announced his candidacy, and starting his presidency with a ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries.

            With her comments about Minnesotan Omar, Boebert, elected by a deep red Western Slope district, has slandered 3.45 million Americans – our Muslim population. She has defamed more of her fellow countrymen than live in Utah or Nevada.

            The Republican Party is complicit. Feckless leaders like Kevin McCarthy don't dare denounce her. McCarthy knows she is following today's Golden Rule for Republicans: "Do unto others as Donald Trump would do unto them."

            It's interesting that Boebert would call Omar and her political allies the "jihad squad," when Boebert and Greene, and the wrecking crew of terrorists Trump sent to the Capitol on Jan. 6, waged the closest thing to an anti-American jihad we've ever known.

            Bombs? A terrorist placed one each outside Democratic and Republican headquarters in Washington that very day.

            Calling the storming of the Capitol what it was – terrorism -- got Rep. Liz Cheney expelled by her own party in Wyoming. Fortunately, she is not muzzled as she and others probe the causes of one America's darkest days.

            In light of the Republican Party swallowing its whistle over Boebert's words, "If there is any remaining traditional moral leadership in the GOP, I'm asking where it is," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

            The GOP rallies around feverish nut job Paul Gosar when he's censured for a video fantasizing about rubbing out one of his colleagues in the House. It is the dignity of Liz Cheney that makes good Republicans squeamish.

            Responding to the outcry over her indefensible comments, Boebert, calling herself "a strong Christian," said, "I never want anything I say to offend someone's religion."

            If the latter were in the form of a contract, we could trust never to hear so much as a bleat from her evermore.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

GOP blames whom as virus flares?

            Webster defines gall as "brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and indolence."

            House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has a lot of that

            Enough to pave an interstate.

            In his recent dusk-to-dawn prattle-athon trying to stop Joe Biden's social spending initiative, McCarthy said many idiotic things. Topping all was blaming Biden for the current state of the pandemic.

            If we must assay horse manure for purity, this claim is extra-virgin.

            If any partisans are to be blamed for the state of the pandemic it is McCarthy and his Trumpy pals.

            Blaming Biden is like ignoring your electric bill for three months and complaining to the power company because you missed "Real Housewives."

            It's running a red light and blaming the police for not being there to stop you.

            It's letting your milk go rancid and blaming the dairy.

            It's like how too many Trumpy WASPs have acted throughout this health emergency -- like toddlers.

            Trump scandalously downplayed a disease that killed millions. He lied to the nation, though he knew of its severity. Not only did he mock basic prevention, he demanded super-spreader events from which many got ill and some died.

            He caught COVID himself, then made it all about – guess whom? Himself.

            Too bad for all of us without presidential health care.

            In the months since Trump was cast out from the White House, Republicans have been the ones to wage jihad against mask mandates and play troll games about vaccines.

            And they have gotten ill -- and died -- at far higher rates than those aligned with Biden.

            How much higher? The difference is stunning, and indefensible.

            Data from Johns Hopkins University show the Trumpiest counties have nearly three times – 2.78 percent – more new COVID cases than those siding with Biden in 2020.

            This corresponds, naturally, to far higher rates of vaccination among Democrats than those suckled on Tucker Carlson propaganda.

            In the face of the discrepancy between rates of infection in the South, apologists of the Trump kind have asserted that rates of infection among black and brown people have dragged them down.

            As with just about anything else Trump and his cultists have to say about the pandemic, this is not true.

            Data from the Centers for Disease Control show that unvaccinated whites are outpacing people of color in dying from COVID.

            It's true that early in the pandemic the disease disproportionately affected people of color. No more. In almost every state, reports the CDC, white people are dying at higher rates.

            This is the Democrats' fault, say Trumpy Republicans. People have bowed their backs at mandates for masks and vaccines, they say. They would have done the smart thing, we are to believe, if the Great Pretender still was in charge.

            That assumes Trump would not still be mocking science and common sense, lying, and doing anything other than addressing the pandemic as president.

            This is the man who did not meet with his own COVID task force his last eight months in office.

            Of course not. First he needed to watch his impeachment on TV. Then he had a presidential election to overturn. He pretended to be president then, just as he does now. Except now he really isn't president but refuses to acknowledge that fact.

            So, Biden is to blame for being – um – too involved? Apparently this is the charge.

            A spokesman for McCarthy said vaccine mandates are unnecessary because "natural immunity from those that have recovered from infection" will blunt the illness. You know, herd immunity.

            Medical professionals say that those placing their bets on natural immunity have Joe Rogan on the brain.

            The CDC says that previously infected but unvaccinated people have twice the risk of infection as those fully immunized.

            But what does the CDC know? It won't promote horse de-wormer. And it wants to enslave people in face covers.

            The next thing you know it will insist on hand-washing. Whatever happened to our freedom?

            Because of Trump, because of Trumpy governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, simple precautions have assumed the equivalent of war. Yeah, culture war.

            Sure, Kevin McCarthy. Blame the Democrats. With the swath of pain the virus cuts every day through your political base, someone must be held responsible.

            Don't you ever pin "responsible" on the party of Trump.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Don’t even try to change the subject

            Sure, there are other problems in the world.

            Raisins are a problem -- cooked raisins, plumped and pleading, contrived to make muffins and cinnamon rolls vessels of subversion.

            Turnips are a problem. Steamed in their own ooze, they bite the young innocent who thinks it's a bit of -- what? Potato?

            Liver is a problem. Goose. Chicken. Calf. No onion should ever give its life for this.

            All are problems, but they are not the problem, and we are not changing the subject.

            A reader emails: "Why denounce sweet potatoes each Thanksgiving when there is this? Please take a stand."

            "This" is a photo of a magnificent turkey, brown and basted, posing in a steaming pile of Brussels sprouts.

            Let me just say: Anyone who builds such a moat around the main course needs counseling.

            But Brussels sprouts are no more the issue in 2021 than voter fraud was in 2020.

Sweet potatoes for dinner: Now, that is rampant fraud.

            And so, again I press my case against sweet potatoes as food. I know them not to be. I ate sweet potatoes once. Once.

            The world needs this crusade because so many are deceived – defrauded.

            There was Parade magazine the other day pitching "Candied Sweet Potato Pie" (with orange liqueur and orange zest "to add zip").

            Then there's the "sweet potatoes au gratin" recipe from George and Laura Bush, not only depleting the nation's strategic reserve of Gruyere cheese, but employing already-scarce rosemary. The recipe also squanders two cloves of garlic. Listen, people: That garlic never hurt anybody.

            A reader sends a threatening news clipping from the Magnolia Gazette of Pike County, Miss.

            A cheery headline, "Take Note of the Wonder of the Mississippi Sweet Potato!" cannot mask the menace. (We don't like exclamation points, either.)

            Mississippi claims the title: "Sweet Potato Capital of the World," which is no brag.

            The article praises the "artful agriculturists" who made this possible. My reaction: If artful, why not grow something edible?

            The inedibility of their product was affirmed by my already well-educated taste buds more than a half century ago.

            The article exhorts Mississippians to "take prideful notice of the sight of 'Mississippi-grown Sweet Potatoes'" being shipped far and wide.

            Let me just say that if those starchy objects are headed to factories to be made into jet fuel, eye-liner or Hula Hoops, let them take wing.

            However, those of us without palates of stone must fight the whole sweet-potatoes-as-side-dish thing.

            Once again, I could be addressing other world problems. Fruit cake is one.

            More than one seismologist has warned that the accumulated weight of fruit cakes that are given but not eaten will -- at a point undetermined -- cause the Earth's crust to give way.

            But that's a down-the-road problem. Sweet potatoes are a problem of today.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

A little boy and a gun that owned him

            In the book "Rampage Nation," author Louis Klarevas, who narrowly averted death at the barrel of a long arm, employs the standard term "mass killing" for four or more victims.

            Had one of Kyle Rittenhouse's rapid rounds not torn through the arm of one of the three people he shot but instead hit his heart, head or torso, the junior vigilante would have been three quarters of the way there.

            Arm, not head or heart. Just "winged," not dead, like Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26.

            Is the placement of that bullet the slender thread by which Rittenhouse today is a free man and not a convicted mass murderer?

            Whew. Lucky for you, kid.

            Regardless, the new mascot of MAGA valor – Rep. Matt Gaetz says he'd offer him an internship -- has been reunited with his family and his firearms, where he can dream of whom to plug next.

            Call it a travesty. Call it a vindication. But acknowledge that had an urge not possessed this child to arm himself, cross state lines and insert himself into a scene of chaos, much would have been avoided.

            Two dead. One maimed. A trial as costly as it was ghastly. One perpetually traumatized community.

            Imagine what would be if Rittenhouse had stayed home and lived his teen fantasies through Fox News.

            More pertinently, imagine if he had exercised his driving privileges and delved into Kenosha's chaos with a smartphone, not an AR-15.

            So much tragedy in this world because someone was owned by a firearm:

            George Zimmerman would not have indulged in raw stupidity, ultimately killing a dark-skinned teen, had he not possessed his gun, or had it not possessed him.

            Without his piece, Zimmerman would have summoned police – you know, professionals trained to enforce the law.

            While we're at it, the victim of Rittenhouse who was wounded but survived, Gaige Grosskreutz, was possessed of stupidity himself, and suitably armed.

            Grosskreutz said he fired his Glock in the air before Rittenhouse shot him in the arm.

            I'm thinking Grosskreutz wishes he had packed a second sandwich for the Kenosha protests instead of the Glock. Unlike the sandwich, the gun made him do something dumb – confront a loose cannon in little Kyle Rittenhouse.

            In Colorado, a "good guy with a gun" is dead. John Hurley, 40, shot dead a gunman who had killed an Arvada police officer. It was heroic. It also was ill-advised. When another officer arrived, that officer assumed Hurley was the bad guy. He killed Hurley.

            These are scenarios to be acted out over and over in states where being openly armed is sanctioned, even encouraged.

            It's the kind of mortal threat that's courted with calls to arm teachers.

            One would think the gun sanity organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which formed after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, might be open to this idea to keep schools safe. Hardly.

            "The notion of a highly trained teacher armed with a gun is a myth," it states. Teachers could never attain gun training anywhere comparable to what police departments require.

            With other factors involved – confusion at an active shooter scene, the potential of accidental discharge or theft – it's no surprise that the nation's largest teacher's organizations, as well as major police groups, roundly oppose this horrible idea.

            Says C. Thomas Manger, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, "The more guns that are coming into the equation, the more volatility and the more risk there is of somebody getting hurt."

            Kyle Rittenhouse might agree with this were he not living a MAGA/NRA/Fox News fantasy.

            Tragedies like this are what you get when people elevate implements of death to mythical status. Two dead, one maimed because a gun made a boy think he could be of service at a disturbance a state away.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.