March 01st, 2014

3/2/2014

Gov. McCrory right, inspects damage from his old company in North Carolina.

A crisis is brewing for residents of the Greater New York Metropolitan Area, where we like to think we have the cutting edge in everything.

Even those of us who live in New York had been taking a perverse kind of pride in the revelations about Gov. Christie’s regime in New Jersey where they shut down the George Washington Bridge when they feel like it, and apparently do other nefarious things.

It’s been fun watching Christie dial down his bullying as he nationally turns into what Bill Maher described as “350 pounds of toast.”

But now the dreadful realization is sinking in that the governor of our neighbor to the west may not even be in the top three of wretched governors.

There’s worse.

Take for example the governor of Georgia, one Nathan Deal, who recently presided over a snowstorm that paralyzed the Atlanta area, during which he gave the appearance of having the IQ of a snowman. I remember it snowing before a Super Bowl in Atlanta. The governor apparently did not.

However, this guy is more dangerous than we thought. Deal is currently administering the closing of rural hospitals that serve the poor. He may be able to justify this, economically and maybe even theologically: let the poor take care of themselves. For more about this guy, check this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5NMRHIOhA

Further north, the governor of North Carolina, Pat McCrory, is reaping the results of his efforts to cut back on regulation of coal waste and other ecological malpractice. Oh, yes. McCrory toiled 28 years for Duke Energy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/us/coal-ash-spill-reveals-transformation-of-north-carolina-agency.html?_r=0

Nearby, in a similar disaster, poorly-regulated chemical containers leaked into the rivers that flow through Charleston, W. Va., Weeks after the spill, children were still getting sick when they used running water at their local schools, and people were afraid to take baths in their own homes. At press conferences, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin was inarticulate, a human shrug. Like just about all West Virginia politicians, he didn’t want to ruffle his friends in the coal industry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/us/one-month-after-toxic-spill-west-virginians-face-crisis-of-confidence.html

Examples like these put Chris Christie outside the top three. I can’t count Arizona governor Jan Brewer, normally addled and non-verbal, since she vetoed a bill that would have allowed residents to express their religious-based bigotry toward gays on a daily basis. Brewer only did it after Delta and Marriott and the National Football League pointed out the possible loss of considerable income. One cannot really call Brewer courageous, but her enforced practicality does take her out of the top three, for the moment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/us/Brewer-arizona-gay-service-bill.html

And you really can’t count former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell – and his well-dressed wife – who have been separately indicted for taking lucrative favors from a businessman-friend. Back where I’m from, we call people like that schnorrers. But McDonnell is no longer a governor, merely a defendant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/us/politics/ex-governor-of-virginia-and-wife-plead-not-guilty-to-corruption.html

That leaves Christie floating outside the top three, shunned in public by his own Republican governors. And this is not a political issue, not after I covered news and politics in Appalachia back in the day. I remember one election night in Kentucky, when one party or the other swept back into power. The party leader went on statewide television and bragged, “They had their turn at the trough; now it’s our turn.”

Christie is now making the best of a bad situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/nyregion/christies-plan-to-shift-the-publics-attention-from-scandal.html?hpw&rref=nyregion

Under scrutiny, Christie comes off as a provincial blowhard who hires people like the former high-school nonentity, Wildstein, and his former assistant, Kelly, who made jokes about a prominent Chabad rabbi. What a pair.

Christie has been exposed as a local, a guy who barely left his home state for college in Delaware, did law school back home, and seems to ooze air, like a dysfunctional parade balloon, when he leaves his comfort zone.

Remember when Tony Soprano would go into New York to shack up or have a meal or meet one of his rivals under a bridge? Tony always seemed to shrink, even if he was packing. Christie has been deflated, living out his second term. People commute to New York and Philadelphia, shrugging him off. Can’t even crack the top three. Loser.

(Note: The Comment/Reply section seems to be malfunctioning for this specific posting. Maybe Wildstein did it. I am trying to reach the site administrator at Weebly. GV.)

Snow in Georgia? Their governor was stunned.

Ed Martin

3/1/2014 09:35:08 am

Missed a big one George.
http://www.floridadems.org/newsroom/pressrelease/how-get-rich-quick-taxpayer-funds-donate-rick-scotts-campaign

George Vecsey

3/1/2014 09:45:05 am

He was on my list...but I figure he did worse before he became governor. This is like work-release for him. But thanks.
GV

Brian Savin

3/2/2014 12:30:22 am

Unfortunately, electing a rogues gallery of politics is about as much sport as shooting fish in a barrel. In college I had a couple of courses from a Professor MacGregor whose last lecture of every class was entirely devoted to an appeal to his students to consider strongly a career in government service. He outlined how important the work of democratic government is to our society was and how every job, no matter how low one starts, gives one the opportunity to do good for real people. He believed our society got stronger the more talented our government work force became. Well, the crassness of our elected officials, the string pullers of special interests who put up these candidates, has dampened the interest of an entire generation, maybe two, in government service. It is a terrible thing to hope that good brilliant teacher is dead, so he doesn't have to endure what has become of us.

George Vecsey

3/3/2014 02:47:02 am

Brian, perceptive as always. I wonder what your teacher would think of Citizens United decision. Best, GV

Ed Martin

3/3/2014 03:19:09 am

Brian, right on target. From 1965 to 81 I worked in DC building federal policy on education for children with disability. I was able to recruit many university leader and experienced educators to take a few years off to help. We felt we were following JFK's instruction,, "Ask not...". President Reagan began the process of turning the government into the enemy and young people are much less likely to want to join.

John McDermott

3/3/2014 05:36:16 am

Quite the best summing up of Christie I've seen, especially the "provincial blowhard" part. Well done, George. Hard to believe this devious buffoon was being seriously spoken of as a candidate for the White House. Trying to imagine "President Christie" and his first meeting with Putin. Or even Netanyahu. Christie would make W look like FDR.

George Vecsey

3/3/2014 05:51:50 am

Christie is right at home with some governors (I didn't have room to even mention people like Scott or Walker or the guy in Pennsylvania, whom one political columnist nicknamed Ted Baxter.) But Christie would be out of his league with governors who actually believe in governing. It is a blessing he has been exposed through the infantile behavior of his staff, at best. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

March 01st, 2014

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