Masthead

Coronablog

Spain Debates UBI-type Program Amid Covid-19

(12)

In a country facing "the worst economic crisis since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939," the ruling socialist government is turning to a basic income system to mitigate the economic crisis.

Der Spiegel:

The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the debate in Spain over the introduction of a basic income, since state-funded social aid does not yet exist. It wasn't until the death of the dictator Franco in 1975 that a welfare state developed here, though it was rather week. Families with children receive hardly any support.

The introduction of a basic income was therefore the main election promise of the leftist Podemos party and they made the program part of their coalition agreement with the Socialists last fall. Now the Sánchez government is rushing to get the project off the ground to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from plunging into the abyss.

"It is a historic moment for our democracy," said Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, "the birth of a new social law."
Spain, after all, still hasn't fully recovered from the consequences of the financial and economic crisis of 2008. Even before the outbreak of the virus, the poverty rate hovered around 20 percent and the labor market is divided, with too few people enjoying permanent contracts with unemployment benefits, and too many having to make do with temporary contracts that often only last for a few days. According to statistics from the Spanish employment agency SEPE, 8.4 million people are now looking for a job.

Thus far, only regional governments have allocated aid money -- paltry sums that reached only 75,000 people, or barely a third of all the poor, according to social researcher Flores. Basic income would provide financial security for the most vulnerable 850,000 households.

But an "ingreso mínimo vital," literally a "minimum income to live," comes with strings attached. The program would only apply to people between the ages of 23 and 65 and they must have been registered as living in Spain for at least one year without interruption. They must also be actively looking for a steady job, be involved in a continuing education program or, in cases of drug dependency, be enrolled in a therapy program. The social welfare office would look into applicants' assets and existing income and that would be topped up to a level of 462 euros per month for singles and up to 1,015 euros per month for a family of five.

Comment →

Cornonavirus Outbreak Causes MLB to Suspend Games

(72)

It's been less than a week and already Major League Baseball has a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on their hands.

Major League Baseball's season is less than a week old, but one team has already experienced a coronavirus outbreak that will sideline a chunk of its roster and has caused a game to be canceled. The Miami Marlins, who had four players test positive during their opening series against the Philadelphia Phillies, had an additional eight players and two coaches test positive on Monday, less than 12 hours before they were supposed to play their home opener against the Baltimore Orioles, according to ESPN's Jeff Passan.

That means the Marlins have had at least 14 individuals become infected over the last several days. In response to the outbreak, the Marlins game against the Orioles on Monday night will not be played, Baltimore GM Mike Elias confirmed.

The Yankees-Phillies game for tonight (Monday, 27Jun20) has now been "postponed".
The Marlins' home opener in Miami against Baltimore is also postponed.

Comment →

RNC Cancelled. Again.

(4)

For the second time, and it would seem final one, the Republican National Convention has been cancelled. At least, the in-person part of it, and by none other than President Trump himself.

The Jacksonville, Fla., component of the Republican National Convention has been cancelled, President Trump announced on Thursday, as cases of coronavirus continue to spike across the state.

"I looked at my team and I said the timing for this event is not right. It's just not right with what's been happening," Trump said at the daily coronavirus briefing.

"They said 'Sir, we can make this work very easily' ... I said there's nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe, whether it's from the China virus or the radical left mob."

Comment →

Andrew Scales The Lofty Heights of Mt Cuomo

(64)

Presented without further comment, because I'm sure you folks will do plenty of that:

“I love history, I love poster art,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday. He also loves deploying a mountain analogy to describe New York’s fight against COVID-19 and his and the state’s efforts to flatten the curve of new infections. He declared that New York was “on the other side of the mountain” during one of his then-daily coronavirus press conferences in early May. Then, at the end of June, after COVID-19 infections began spiking throughout much of the rest of the country, Cuomo shockingly unveiled a huge model of an actual mountain during another press conference to physically illustrate the analogy again, even using his hand to demonstrate New York’s journey up and over the metaphorical pandemic mountain:

While Cuomo has not yet held a coronavirus press event using the Catskills, on Monday he unveiled, for the second time this year, an old-timey campaign poster devoted to himself depicting not only his pandemic mountain but illustrating numerous other elements related to both New York’s fight against the coronavirus and the quirky asides the governor liked to make across his more than 100 daily pressers during the outbreak.

Both posters have been based on Cuomo’s own sketches and painted in a style inspired by a 1900s campaign illustration for a Nebraska politician named William Jennings Bryan. The first poster, released in January, depicted Cuomo’s accomplishments as governor utilizing a ship as a metaphor for the state.

The poster, available from the State of New York for the low, low prince of $14.50 plus shipping and handling:

Comment →

Returning to Abnormal

(5)

Returning to Abnormal

(5)

[caption id="attachment_333095" align="alignleft" width="1024"] Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (1589-1662) - Peasants Dancing - [Public Domain][/caption]

So how, one might ask, did I find myself on the day my city “reopened” walking around downtown giggling uncontrollably with my friend Abraham* both out of our minds on acid? Well, let me explain.

It was a few weeks ago that Ontario officially began its “reopening,” a term that evokes a department store sale and entails widening the range of businesses allowed to operate under the shadow of the pandemic. It was a surprisingly grim affair: I had the sense that the general public and average workers were far less keen to “return to normal” than business owners and politicians. My social media feed was engorged with restaurateurs trying to line up reservations on one side, and servers asking people not to go out and eat on the other. Four months into our relationship with this virus and we still have a great many mysteries about how it spreads and what damage it does. The people who are nearest to being our test subjects tend to be in jobs with little pay and meager social esteem. Asking them to put their lives on the line so white-collar professionals can avoid learning how to cook for themselves seems a bit crass; the weekend had all the atmosphere of a childhood party arranged for kids who aren’t actually friends and don’t want to be there.

In fact, by the time it finally happened, the spectacle of reopening had taken on a carnivalesque tone, a sort of sideshow tent hucksterism that seemed breathless and hysterical: Come see the half-living economy and be amazed! Keep children’s fingers away from its jaws! No one over the age of 65 will be admitted! To sociologists, the carnivalesque is a “liminal” state, in which the normal rules of social life are suspended and held up to ridicule. Which is pretty much what the virus has done. Using LSD seemed a bit superfluous, but not inappropriate.

Abraham is about as much like myself as I can stand in a friend. He’s Jewish, and I’m more Jewesque. We’re both middle-aged, divorced, socially-alienated, slightly neurotic cynics. He has a bit more equanimity than I do; I have a bit more unfounded hope left. We both have an uneasy relationship with academia after entirely too much experience. He’s trying to get his life together, although certain events have made it difficult. His old life has effectively come to an end and a new life is taking shape, slowly and painfully. I am dimly aware that the contours of my own life no longer match what’s in my heart. I work sporadic maintenance shifts at the university where he studies, have a book coming out this winter and hope to have another out next year, and am only happiest doing this: assembling sentences and paragraphs. Neither of us is particularly suited to ever “return to normal.”

I think all of us have had the occasional sense that our lives are performances for someone else’s benefit, be they teachers, parents, bosses, or spouses. Sartre called this a type of "bad faith," which he attributed, somewhat dickishly, to the “ceremonial” aspect of certain trades, writing about the waiter whose actions are a little too waiterly, and who is aware of the disconnect between the role he is playing and the self playing it. Sartre spent a lot of time writing in cafes and it’s a somewhat acrid image to imagine him sitting there writing about the waiter’s supposed fear of freedom.

He had a point though that society tends to “work hard to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape it, that he might overflow and suddenly elude his condition.” We are most offended, as he puts it, by a grocer who dreams. We want things to function smoothly without real investment on our part. How much more coercive is it when the waiter is on the “front lines” of a viral outbreak, being told it is fundamental to our society that he keep serving tapas and sugary deserts. At the very least, few could have anticipated the apocalypse would have frozen yogurt.

This social pressure is a bit more red-faced and spittle-flecked in a “revitalizing” city like ours, one of a great many North American hamlets where the local government has attempted to supplant a moribund- although, not as much in decline as purported- industrial economy with a service economy of high end boutiques and gourmet restaurants. A great many hopes are hanging on the very thin reed of our becoming a “foodie destination.” In reality, we excel in neither type of industry: ours is a real estate economy. The boutiques are window dressing. The real money is in financialized real estate speculation. The waiters can barely afford our rents. Normal was already built on sand before the deluge.
______________________________________________________________________________

Abraham had purchased tabs of acid and found the first one didn’t work for him the week prior; he was willing to try again though. I came over to his house around noon on a day in which the heat enshrouded you and hung off your face, and I was already a bit delirious. We both had to gulp down mason jars of cold water before we could begin and lie on the couches for a bit because our backs and feet hurt. If anything says middle-aged Jewish man more than dropping acid and talking about your back pain, I don’t know what it is.

As everyone knows, LSD takes a certain amount of time to be absorbed and take effect, and when it does, I find it’s a bit of a telescoping effect: things become at once more distant and more vibrant. The fish tank across the room looked as if it was situated down a dark hallway and as radiantly illuminated as a shrine. Shadows slithered up the walls and the floor dropped out of sight. It was a pleasant sensation. I enjoy acid; you become a stickler for details. Everything seems luminous and significant, but also hilarious in its mundaneness.

I enjoyed this contrast for either five minutes or six hours when my friend said “We should probably go get alcohol.” I’m not a drinker really- when I take acid, I usually want tart candies. And I was not feeling inclined to surf the streets on acid. It seemed like a misguided idea all around, so I agreed to it.

The sun was an interrogator’s floodlight as we set off down Main Street feeling every hitch and buckle of a sidewalk like broken piano keys. The buildings leaned down to watch us from above and the occasional lone woman glided by like a feather, her lacquered fingernails gleaming. Gender is somehow an indicator of gentrification. You can always tell when you’re in a poor neighborhood because you see more young males on the street; young women are more dominant in higher-income spaces. We were approaching one of those areas. I avoided eye contact for the normal reason: I don’t want them calling the police.

We passed a fenced-in vacant lot teeming with garbage and overgrown weeds.

“Imagine how many small varmints must be in there,” Abraham said.

“My cat would love it,” I said. “Someone should turn it into a safari for bored housecats.”

“Drive them around in little Jeeps? Stop and let them out when they see a mouse?”

“Outfit them in pith helmets. I’d pay for this service.” I would too.

Up the block, we passed City Hall and an old hotel with a sign by the door reading “No Peddlers Allowed.” This amused my friend. “Do you think they have a problem with peddlers sneaking in and selling their wares? Off little tables?”

“Oh, like the cigarette girls with the trays around their necks?”

“Yes, I just imagine the peddlers hide them under black trench coats and sneak in.”

“I wouldn’t put it past a peddler. I also have a theory that many of the so-called people who are opposed to removing statues are really groups of pigeons in black trench coats.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s cross.” We cross the courtyard of the local art gallery to the Northwest entrance of the mall that occupies several blocks of downtown. This is the only entrance open and, in order to enter, you have to first line up and get past two security guards. We queue up and everyone in the line is given a paper ticket to deposit at the store of their choice. Nearly all of the stores are closed; everyone in line is there for the LCBO (Licquor Control Board of Ontario). When we’re handed the tickets, I make the obvious comparison.

“I hope this is a good ride.”

“Disneyland has really gone downhill.”
“This is the Children of Men ride, right?”

On the sidewalk, a cluster of holloweyed heads perched on piles of clothing watch a stocky street preacher ranting about getting right with God before death comes, while his assistant yowls in tongues behind him. It feels a bit too on the nose for me. “I’m glad he’s here,” I comment, “I’d feel cheated off a bit if he wasn’t.”

We enter the mall and leave our tickets in a bowl. There is a metal table of hand sanitizers and four staff members huddled off to the side nervously giggling. My friend grabs handfuls of the most bizarre bottles he can find and we line up again. At the cash register, there is a plexiglass partition and after every few customers, a girl runs up with a spray bottle and a cloth and cleans it as quickly as possible, while her coworkers laugh and cheer. I whisper to Abraham: “Just imagine how many young people are coming of age right now and will have lifelong sexual fantasies about the plexiglass cleaner girl. Just like those roller-skating waitresses from the 50s.”

We depart and, as my apartment is on the other side of the mall, decide to traverse the building by its large and decrepit 70s architecture rooftop “social area,” which I cleaned for a year and still refer to as the J.G. Ballard Memorial Rooftop. Usually, there are homeless men up there drinking or shooting up or smoking marijuana, but it is eerily abandoned today. The only person we pass is an attractive young woman who eyes me seductively, or at least I think. Maybe she didn’t. I keep my head down.

After this point, our perceptions are equally out-of-whack, but I think the following happened. We walked the sidewalk around the building. Are we being perused by horses? I wondered. No, there was a woman in high heels on the sidewalk. We walked past the large empty parking garage that feeds into the large empty mall. “Did you hear that?” Abraham asked. It sounded like a woman’s voice deep within in the parking garage screaming and singing like a siren. On the next block, a group of gym-toned muscle men in short pants stood outside of a bubble tea and sweets place eating from tiny cups of ice cream and giggling together. We crossed to avoid them.

We headed to my apartment and its expansive roof, which has become a distanced meeting place for friends and other recovering adults throughout the pandemic. Me and Abraham sat on the roof and watched clouds roll and mushroom, twist and deflate.

As it happened, my roommate was having people on the roof for her friend's birthday that night and “perhaps she might not want to deal with two guys who are tripping balls” it was politely explained to us. After making sure to visit my cat Iggy and tell him how wise I think he is, we left for the basement record store I help run. We passed a restaurant patio with three people dining and a lineup of young people waiting for take out pizza. My friend asked them repeatedly what they were watching, unconvinced they were just there for oven-baked pizza. Otherwise, the downtown shopping district was vacant.

Once safely hidden in the basement, Abraham and I listened to the most horrific music we could find- Throbbing Gristle, Lingua Ignota, Napalm Death, etc. and still laughed. It felt as if we were huddling underground while brutal storms ravaged the aboveground, rivers of disease flowing down the stairs to the shop. Another existential gen holds that all human be-ing is directed into the future and is ultimately being-towards-death. It felt like we were at the rotten heart of that trip, at its final destination, still laughing. After months of platitudes about normalcy, it felt cathartic and necessary.

The strangest part of this pandemic time is how death and horror have been domesticated and defanged, incorporated into our narcoleptic routines of work and consumption and killing time. I keep thinking of Death in Venice and its dissolute artist in the Grand Hotel resort trying to get anyone to tell him if people are really dying of cholera throughout the city, while he clings to an image of youth as cold and distant as the moon.

Abraham’s girlfriend came and picked us up in her car and drove us back to his house. She was exhausted after a 12-hour shift and so he made us sausages and played us records and then it was time for the two of them to go to bed. I excused myself and walked back home through a poorer part of the city that seemed closer to pandemonium. Young men were yelling on corners, walking into traffic, starting fights, breaking windows, fireworks exploding just above our heads. If a society is a vehicle that helps transport us through our lives, there seems to be a part broken, maybe for a long time now. There’s a feeling that someone else is driving and it’s not clear where we’re going. Certainly not back to normal.

I had been slightly deranged for eight hours by this point and was now alone, sweating, my thoughts like a skull full of hornets. But, I had survived on this side of sanity. And it seemed that Abraham and I had caused no real damage. This is good. There’s already a surplus of indolent men like us with too much education and no idea how to make anything better. The best we can hope is to do no harm.

Half exhausted, I returned to the record store and I listened to gospel music until the sun came up.

(*Not his name, of course.)

Comment →

Coronablog →

Ten Second News

Boston Marathon Bomber’s Death Sentence Overturned on Appeal

(1)

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving half of the brothers who were behind the Boston Marathon bombing, is off death row -- for now.

A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new penalty-phase trial on whether the 27-year-old Tsarnaev should be executed for the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

“But make no mistake: Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution,” the judges said, more than six month after arguments were heard in the case.

An email seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Tsarnaev. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston said they were reviewing the opinion and had no immediate comment.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged at the beginning of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off the two bombs at the marathon finish line. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is less culpable than his brother, who they said was the mastermind behind the attack.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing. Dzhokar Tsarnaev is now behind bars at a high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Tsarnaev was convicted on 30 charges, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Tsarnaev’s attorneys identified a slew of issues with his trial, but said in a brief filed with the court that the “first fundamental error” was the judge’s refusal to move the case out of Boston. They also pointed to social media posts from two jurors suggesting they harbored strong opinions even before the 2015 trial started.

One juror had said in Twitter posts that that she was “locked down” with her family during the manhunt and retweeted another post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of garbage,” but later told the court she had not commented on the case or been asked to shelter in place, the defense said. On the day of Tsarnaev’s sentencing, the juror changed her Facebook profile picture to an image that said “BOSTON STRONG,” a rallying cry used in the wake of the bombing, the attorneys said.

Comment →

Unsealed Documents in Past Case Focuses Attention Back on Jeffrey Epstein

(2)

The release of documents in the ongoing case against Ghislaine Maxwell, who faces multiple charges related to Jeffrey Epstein's alleged criminal activities, has flared up the accusations against some very big names once again.

A federal judge has unsealed hundreds of pages of transcripts and other documents related to a now-settled defamation suit brought against Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of helping the late Jeffrey Epstein run a sex trafficking operation that catered to rich and powerful men.

The documents include a deposition given by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the draft of a memoir she was writing about her experiences inside the sex-trafficking ring, and email exchanges between Maxwell and Epstein.

Maxwell, Epstein's ex-girlfriend, was charged earlier this month on several counts related to sex trafficking of minors and perjury. She has pleaded not guilty in that case. The 2015 defamation suit was brought by Giuffre after the British socialite accused her of lying when she alleged Epstein and Maxwell had sexually abused and exploited her.

Among other things, the documents included an email exchange in which Epstein protested his innocence and appeared to provide Maxwell with a statement to the media or set of talking points that she might use in defending herself against the allegations.

Maxwell had been the "target of outright lies, innuendo, slander, defamation and salacious gossip and harassment," the email said in language that pushed back against "false allegations of impropriety and offensive behavior that I abhor and have never ever been party to."

A few days later, responding to an email from Maxwell, Epstein wrote: "You have done nothing wrong and I (would) urge you to start acting like it." He urged her to "go outside, head high, not as an (escaping) convict. go to parties. deal with it."

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered the documents unsealed last week after Maxwell's lawyer Laura Menninger made a last-minute appeal to keep them from going public, arguing that they could damage her defense.

Important note on all this from Adam Klasfeld:

Virginia Giuffre's interview with her lawyers from 2011, however, has been unsealed for the first time.

The screenshots are flowing freely tonight, but the hard work of contextualizing and following up on leads will emerge with time from reporters closely eyeing the case.

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) July 31, 2020

Comment →

Spain Debates UBI-type Program Amid Covid-19

(12)

In a country facing "the worst economic crisis since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939," the ruling socialist government is turning to a basic income system to mitigate the economic crisis.

Der Spiegel:

The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the debate in Spain over the introduction of a basic income, since state-funded social aid does not yet exist. It wasn't until the death of the dictator Franco in 1975 that a welfare state developed here, though it was rather week. Families with children receive hardly any support.

The introduction of a basic income was therefore the main election promise of the leftist Podemos party and they made the program part of their coalition agreement with the Socialists last fall. Now the Sánchez government is rushing to get the project off the ground to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from plunging into the abyss.

"It is a historic moment for our democracy," said Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, "the birth of a new social law."
Spain, after all, still hasn't fully recovered from the consequences of the financial and economic crisis of 2008. Even before the outbreak of the virus, the poverty rate hovered around 20 percent and the labor market is divided, with too few people enjoying permanent contracts with unemployment benefits, and too many having to make do with temporary contracts that often only last for a few days. According to statistics from the Spanish employment agency SEPE, 8.4 million people are now looking for a job.

Thus far, only regional governments have allocated aid money -- paltry sums that reached only 75,000 people, or barely a third of all the poor, according to social researcher Flores. Basic income would provide financial security for the most vulnerable 850,000 households.

But an "ingreso mínimo vital," literally a "minimum income to live," comes with strings attached. The program would only apply to people between the ages of 23 and 65 and they must have been registered as living in Spain for at least one year without interruption. They must also be actively looking for a steady job, be involved in a continuing education program or, in cases of drug dependency, be enrolled in a therapy program. The social welfare office would look into applicants' assets and existing income and that would be topped up to a level of 462 euros per month for singles and up to 1,015 euros per month for a family of five.

Comment →

Read the Democratic National Committee’s Party Platform on the War on Drugs

(41)

Note: This doesn't become OFFICIAL until it's officially voted on at the official 2020 convention.

From the draft of the 2020 DNC Platform (warning: PDF):

Substance use disorders are diseases, not crimes. Democrats believe no one should be in prison solely because they use drugs. Democrats will decriminalize marijuana use and reschedule it through executive action on the federal level. We will support legalization of medical marijuana, and believe states should be able to make their own decisions about recreational use. The Justice Department should not launch federal prosecutions of conduct that is legal at the state level. All past criminal convictions for cannabis use should be automatically expunged. And rather than involving the criminal justice system, Democrats support increased use of drug courts, harm reduction interventions, and treatment diversion programs for those struggling with substance use disorders.

Compare to the Official Party Platform from 2016:

Because of conflicting federal and state laws concerning marijuana, we encourage the federal government to remove marijuana from the list of “Schedule 1” federal controlled substances and to appropriately regulate it, providing a reasoned pathway for future legalization. We believe that the states should be laboratories of democracy on the issue of marijuana, and those states that want to decriminalize it or provide access to medical marijuana should be able to do so. We support policies that will allow more research on marijuana, as well as reforming our laws to allow legal marijuana businesses to exist without uncertainty. And we recognize our current marijuana laws have had an unacceptable disparate impact in terms of arrest rates for African Americans that far outstrip arrest rates for whites, despite similar usage rates.

(Featured image is "Donkey" by Steven Collis and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Comment →

Seattle Police Department informs City Council that Police will have Adjusted Deployment Responses

(32)

An excerpt from the letter posted at the Seattle Police Department Blotter:

We have clear, court-mandated procedures for arresting individuals, grounded in the principles of deescalation. SPD’s de-escalation principles are premised on the expectation, consistent with policy and best practices, that officers have the full array of approved tools. In large crowds, there is no safe way for officers to effect arrests when their colleagues do not have the tools necessary to protect them.

As City Council’s legislation goes into effect, it will create even more dangerous circumstances for our officers to intervene using what they have left – riot shields and riot batons.

For these reasons, SPD will have an adjusted deployment in response to any demonstrations this weekend. The Council legislation gives officers no ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd. Allowing this behavior deeply troubles me, but I am duty-bound to follow the Council legislation once it is in effect. If the Council is prepared to suggest a different response or interpretation of the legislation, I stand ready to receive it.

(Featured image is the Official flag of Seattle, created by Paul Kraabel.)

Comment →

Masthead

Executive Editor

Managing Editor

Editors

Team Contributors

Coronablog

Ten Second News

Features

Like Us On Facebook

Archives

Categories

Ordinary Content

Meta

Featured Comment

Recent Comments

ICYMI

Ordinary Twitter