Linky Friday: Beware the Ides of Infrastructure Week Edition

As always, the linked pieces are the opinions of the authors, for discussion purposes, and are not the opinions of Ordinary Times.

Two Takes on the American Jobs Plan Infrastructure Proposal:

[LF1]They be for it:

Biden is transforming the nation’s political assumptions by E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post

Biden’s big new infrastructure program involves far more than roads, bridges and mass transit, but he hopes to remind Republicans that once upon a time, in a Washington of long ago, the two parties were capable of coming together to build stuff.

“Historically, infrastructure had been a bipartisan undertaking, many times led by Republicans,” Biden said in a speech in Pittsburgh outlining the plan. “There’s no reason why it can’t be bipartisan again. The divisions of the moment shouldn’t stop us from doing the right thing for the future.”

His plan is Exhibit A in the paradox of Bidenism.

The president is transforming the nation’s political assumptions by insisting that active government can foster economic growth, spread wealth to those now left out, and underwrite research and investment to produce a cleaner environment and a more competitive tech sector.

But all this comes wrapped in a big but thoroughly traditional government spending program that offers a lot of things to a lot of constituencies — and benefits to a great many voters.

“There is something old-fashioned and decidedly nonradical about Biden’s invitation to see enhanced infrastructure as a vital national interest and to mobilize government to get it done,” Price said in an interview. “The same goes for thinking of nationwide broadband as today’s rural electrification,” the latter a reference to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s popular initiative to bring electricity to a previously unlit countryside.

[LF2]They be Again’ it:

Biden Defines Infrastructure Down: Now it’s mostly about green-energy subsidies and payments to social workers by WSJ Editorial Board

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination, but you wouldn’t know from President Biden’s first two months in office. First came $1.9 trillion in social spending under the cover of Covid-19, and now comes $2.3 trillion more for climate and political spending dressed as “infrastructure.”

Most Americans think of infrastructure as roads, highways, bridges and other traditional public works. That’s why it polls well, and every President has supported more of it.

Yet this accounts for a mere $115 billion of Mr. Biden’s proposal. There’s another $25 billion for airports and $17 billion for ports and waterways that also fill a public purpose. The rest of the $620 billion earmarked for “transportation” are subsidies for green energy and payouts to unions for the jobs his climate regulation will kill. This is really a plan to build government back bigger than it has ever been.

[LF3]The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man: In a crowded field of wrongness, one person stands out: Alex Berenson by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic

Usually, I would refrain from lavishing attention on someone so blatantly incorrect. But with vaccine resistance hovering around 30 percent of the general population, and with 40 percent of Republicans saying they won’t get a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.

Berenson’s TV appearances are more misdirection than outright fiction, and his Twitter feed blends internet-y irony and scientific jargon in a way that may obscure what he’s actually saying. To pin him down, I emailed several questions to him last week. Below, I will lay out, as clearly and fairly as I can, his claims about the vaccines and how dangerously, unflaggingly, and superlatively wrong they are.

Before I go point by point through his wrong positions, let me be exquisitely clear about what is true. The vaccines work. They worked in the clinical trials, and they’re working around the world. The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson seem to provide stronger and more lasting protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants than natural infection. They are excellent at reducing symptomatic infection. Even better, they are extraordinarily successful at preventing severe illness from COVID-19. Countries that have vaccinated large percentages of their population quickly, such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel, have all seen sharp and sustained declines in hospitalizations among the elderly. Meanwhile, countries that have lagged in the vaccination effort—including the U.K.’s neighbors France and Italy, and Israel’s neighbor Jordan—have struggled to contain the virus. The authorized vaccines are marvels, and the case against them relies on half-truths, untruths, and obfuscations.

[LF4]SCOTUS Should End The NCAA’s Faux Amateurism by Tim Miller at The Bulwark

The argument for paying college athletes—or at minimum allowing them to sell their names and likenesses for income—is open-and-shut from the free-market perspective. Yet oftentimes it’s the self-appointed defenders of the free market who are arguing that the players should be happy to receive a “free” education and room and board!

Because nothing says unrestricted market competition like supplying institutional housing to underage laborers. And there is definitely no better way for them to enjoy the fruits of their labor than a subsidized meal plan.

During Wednesday’s arguments, the NCAA repeatedly cited the fact that not paying the players is part of their “product differentiation” from professional sports. Here’s the NCAA explaining that defense:

[The] survey expert tested people’s reactions to giving [the players] . . . a $10,000 academic award, something like 10 percent of the respondents said that they would be less interested and would watch less.

And here’s Justice Alito proposing a hypothetical based on this argument:

There are a lot of old-time sports fans who are turned off by the enormous salaries earned by professional athletes. So suppose a group said we want to take advantage of this unmet demand . . . [and] cap the salaries of all of our players at 1955 levels, corrected for inflation.

Firstly to all the people who said they would quit watching college sports if the players got a measly $10k bonus for their efforts: get bent.

Honestly, how bitter and lost and uncharitable do you have to be to demand that the people entertaining you be denied a portion of the funds they themselves and their efforts generated for you to enjoy it?

The idea that the high court should allow the NCAA to deny compensation to the workers who are making them billions based on the whims of a bunch of old white guys who like their basketball shorts short and their bounce passes crisp is farcical.

[LF5]Georgia’s election reform law isn’t voter suppression, but Republicans need to ease up by Geoff Duncan, Lt Gov of Georgia in USA Today

The words “Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation” have been a part of our state seal since 1799 because of the time-tested value of each word. I began to imagine what the debate might look like if both sides of the aisle were truly looking through the lens of Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation. If both political sides applied the filter of those three words, they’d be required to think, act and communicate differently with regard to the present conversation around election reform and a growing list of other issues.

For Republicans, using that lens would have required them to immediately and unequivocally remove any and all doubt in the public that they think the November election was rigged or stolen in any way shape or form. The phrase, “former President Donald J. Trump lost fairly” would need to be said from every channel.

Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan speaks on June 17, in Atlanta, proposing the hate crime bill for the state of Georgia.
It would have also required elected Republicans in politically safe districts to resist the temptation to superficially support knee-jerk reaction legislation, such as not allowing the distribution of water within 150 feet of a polling station or punishing and removing oversight responsibilities from the former president’s scapegoat and popularly-elected statewide official Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, just to appease the extreme right corners of their districts and to avoid potential primary challenges.

Unfortunately, Republicans fell into the trap set by the left and allowed them to make the bill into something that it’s not.

[LF6]Why Would Anyone Pay Andrew Cuomo $4 Million for a Book? by Alex Shephard in The New Republic

It’s easy to see why publishers love books by politicians. They’re famous and easy to book on television, the gold standard for publicity. (Ironically, one reason why All Things Possible failed was that Cuomo declined to promote it, possibly fearing tough questions as he was running for reelection.) A certain number of sales are often guaranteed; politicians buy lots of their own books directly from publishers and then sell them to supporters to fund campaigns. Additionally, publishing a book by a presidential aspirant increases the likelihood of publishing another book when their profile is even higher.

But while this calculus makes intuitive sense, these books rarely move the needle. Nearly every Democrat running for president in 2020 published a book, and nearly all of them are already forgotten—no one is clamoring for Amy Klobuchar’s The Senator Next Door, Cory Booker’s United, or John Hickenlooper’s The Opposite of Woe (though that one, at least, has an intriguing subtitle: “My Life in Beer and Politics”). Given the serious inequities in publishing—low advances paid to many authors, low salaries for many workers, a lack of diversity at every level—the high advances paid to bland books that rarely sell is particularly galling.

These books are also rarely revealing—they’re contrived bits of marketing designed to reveal as little as possible. Their existence is supposed to be proof of a candidate’s vision and prominence, making their contents of secondary importance. So it is with American Crisis. It doesn’t really matter what Cuomo (or his team) wrote; the fact that he had aides working on it in the midst of a pandemic that was killing his constituents while at the same time covering up the death toll is more damning than anything he or anyone else could have written. Cuomo published a book meant to be a monument to his own political abilities. It’s now looking more like a tombstone on his national political career.

In Case You Missed It At Ordinary Times:

So Grieved A Cloud of Witnesses by Andrew Donaldson
Three days into the Derek Chauvin trial, those visceral reactions so many had to the death of George Floyd are once again raw.

Thursday Throughput: When You Get Caught Between the Moon and Suez Canal by Michael Siegel
To get the giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal unstuck, engineers needed the stars to align. Actually, the sun, Earth and moon.

The American Jobs Plan Infrastructure Plan: Read It For Yourself
President Biden announced his expected infrastructure plan, dubbed The American Jobs Plan, and the White House has released a fact sheet of what they want in the coming legislation.

Rep Matt Gaetz Had A No Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day by Andrew Donaldson
Three things happened in the world of Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL1) yesterday, so let us just lay them out in order and folks can decide for themselves

OT Contributor Network: Spheres of Influence Podcast w/Dennis Sanders
The latest Spheres of Influence Podcast from our friend and Ordinary Times contributor Dennis Sanders.

A Good, Old Fashioned, All-American Satanic Panic by Andrew Donaldson
That’s the beauty of a good Satanic Panic. Like all good conspiracy theories, all proof against it is really proof that it is real.

A Few Notes on COVID and Cats by Rufus
I would compare having COVID to wading into a bog where you can’t see what lurks beneath the water-imagine the trash compactor in Star Wars.

Devoted to The Game: Reviewing Out of the Park Baseball 22 by Christopher Bradley
“My [insert favorite baseball team] is owned/run by complete morons and I must destroy them.” Folks, Out of the Park Baseball 22 is for you.

Basics Belie the Birx Betrayal by Michael Siegel
Other failures-from the Administration, from China, from the WHO, and from our own individual selves-loom much larger than Dr. Deborah Birx

OT Contributor Network: Spheres of Influence Podcast
Ordinary Time contributor Dennis Sanders has a new Spheres of Influence podcast out. Episode 7: Attention Must Be Paid for you to listen to and discuss.

Lazy Man’s Load: Credentialing and Education That Never Fails by John McCumber
Many educational institutions build their programs directly on the back of industry credentialing organizations.