As Glenn Reynolds points out on Instapundit:
Yes, we’re told it’s a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” but the unvaccinated are disproportionately black. They’re disproportionately in hospitals and ICUs, and they’re disproportionately dying, and they’re disproportionately affected by the Democrats’ playing politics with antibody treatments.
And, of course, they’re disproportionately affected by Democrat-backed vaccine-passport requirements.
If you’re curious, this nationally valid observation is true in Rhode Island, too. As of this writing, about 56% of white Rhode Islanders are fully vaccinated, along with 52% of Hispanics. Black Rhode Islanders, however, are only vaccinated at a rate of 48%.
[Open full post]
Although skepticism about Frank Luntz is certainly justified, and although one might worry that the governor gets his news from CNN, it’s encouraging to read that Dan McKee is thinking in these terms:
As McKee spokesman Matt Sheaff tells the story: The governor heard Luntz on CNN “talking about … work he was doing with the Biden administration and polling he was doing on vaccinations, especially in conservative areas of the country.
“He was talking about some strategies … ‘how do we talk to them’ ” — the unvaccinated — ” ‘in a way that they don’t feel attacked’.”
The task at hand calls for convincing, not cudgeling. In keeping with that approach, we read the following:
“The difference this year is that kids are vaccinated, so while teams are not being quarantined as much,” [R.I. Interscholastic League Director Michael] Lunney said. “The most important thing is if you’re vaccinated and you’re not symptomatic, you will not have to quarantine.”
Understandably, Democrats across the country have a difficult position on which to balance. The more vaccination allows a return to life, the more people will be vaccinated (although public health and elected officials have undermined a good deal of their credibility on that claim). However, for political expediency against their opposition, and because a big portion of their base just wants the comfort of knowing government can impose restrictions, Democrats find themselves on the side of fear.
There’s something performative about it all. I volunteered to work a concession stand at Gillette Stadium on Saturday night (where a pro soccer game had a surprisingly large audience), and the masks were few and far between, even on unvaccinated children. Most people understand that they have tools (masks, vaccines, and self isolation) if their tolerance for risk is unusually low. Life can resume.
Indeed, the mystery is why Democrats are refusing to give on some obvious fronts to begin allaying fear. Namely:
- Add people with natural immunity to the mix, which will put the number of people still at risk in a very different light.
- Begin large-scale testing so people (and public health officials) have a real sense of their risks, and make the vaccines available right there when they get their results. The moment they learn they don’t have immunity is a particularly opportune time to give people the option to inoculate themselves.
- Rather than pile on parents’ anxieties with worry about having to make a decision about injecting their very small children with the vaccine, shift the target onto them. One suspects that non-vaccinated parents are likely to be anti-mask parents, and the COVID fear with children is not that they will be greatly harmed, themselves, but that they’ll pass the bug along. So, emphasize that vaccination of adults in the household eases concern about children in the classroom, and set the children free.
Set us all free. Individuals have the tools to all but ensure that they will not suffer greatly from COVID-19, and adults have a right to bear their own risks. Somewhere between 70 and 90% of all Rhode Islanders (including children) have vaccine or natural immunity, at this point. The rest can make their own decisions.
Featured image of Governor Dan McKee being vaccinated from the governor’s website.
[Open full post]
It would be difficult to argue against welcoming an Amazon distribution center in Johnston. That’s a lot of money that will flow into Rhode Island and one of its municipalities.
There’s even an important and encouraging observation to be made about the fact that it will be in Johnston, with its conservative-Democrat mayor, Joe Polisena. An electorate that would elect such chief executive — as opposed to a place like Providence, that may without notice elect a socialist — is a sign of stability and reasonableness to a massive company planning an investment of tens of millions of dollars over decades.
The concern is this: Amazon is going to immediately be a major player (read, “special interest”) in Rhode Island politics. The other special interests (unions, Democrats, environmentalists) will all make out alright, no doubt, but the average person and small businesses are going to find themselves being ushered a little more toward the back of the bus.
[Open full post]
A story in Not the Bee about a teachers union seminar about handling “nice white parents” comes out of Pennsylvania, but one can be sure that Rhode Island unions are talking about how to “limit the power” of “parent groups.”
This should be broadly scandalous, which may indicate that most unions across the country have been smart enough not to publish fliers about such things. As the Washington Examiner tweets, “no other race or ethnic group is subjected to such a curriculum and government-endorsed demonization.”
[Open full post]
On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Advice for parents suing over masks
- Misplaced homeless camp cleanup reactions
- Elorza out of the governor race
- Magaziner in it
- The RIGOP’s lag in candidate announcement
- Amazon’s ripples in Johnston
Featured image by Curology on Unsplash.
[Open full post]
It’s telling that state Representative Gregg Amore (D, East Providence) announced his campaign for Secretary of State at East Providence High School. Per his official General Assembly biography, Amore graduated from that school, returned for a career as a history teacher there, and remains its athletic director.
He’s pretty much the classic Rhode Island candidate, right down to his degree from Providence College and stints coaching sports there, at the Naval Academy Prep School, and at La Salle University. Indeed, he’s been involved in a variety of youth and athletic activities over the years and (of course) in the Democrat city committee from his hometown.
I disagree with Amore’s politics, but that’s all admirable. This does not look like political involvement in the community as a means of setting one up to enjoy a six-figure state office and government pension, but simply a guy building his life around his community.
Still, we have to remember that the Rhode Island system has worked out very well for him, so he’s certain to serve it as Secretary of State, from the teachers union to the Democrat machine. He may not even see it as political payback so much as “giving back” to a community that’s given him so much.
The problem is that this particular office is a terrible platform from which to do such giving back. It should be an essentially clerical job — scrupulously even-handed, even to those who want to reform the Rhode Island system from top to bottom.
Amore may even be better at playing that role than an ideological up-climber like the current Secretary of State, Nellie Gorbea, but nothing from his biography suggests he’ll stand on principle when his friends and allies come asking him to take the next steps toward fully cementing their tight grip on the electoral process.
[Open full post]
The bottom line is that the news media supports progressive Democrats, so its practitioners are not anxious to press their candidates when they decline to answer questions in the service of crafting the news stories. That’s why it’s entirely natural for Rhode Island General Treasurer to hold a press conference announcing his expected run for governor and then walk away having provided reporters with his canned material.
Magaziner is a consummate Democrat insider, and his time as treasurer has been characterized by the constant PR focus. In that way, he’s very much the Raimondo-style candidate of this race, although with lighter credentials and less proven competence.
[Open full post]
In an all-too-familiar sequence of events, progressives made social media noise to shame a politician with whom they disagreed — in this case, Providence City Councilman Nicholas Narducci, who helped the city clean up a homeless encampment under a Rt. 146 overpass — and the news media jumped right in to tow their line, framing it as something that had to be “defended.” Neither WPRI nor the Providence Journal, for example, bothered to talk to any neighbors or investigate the effect the encampment might be having on the neighborhood.
Far-left, anti-cop Councilwoman Kat Kerwin took to Twitter to calling the move “heartless” and to ask, “Who is being hurt by people being there?” That’s a good question for mainstream journalists. Wonder why they didn’t try to answer it.
This performance is meant to keep the progressive stone rolling downhill. It works something like this:
- Progressive policies reduce opportunity, increase dependence on government, and stretch tax dollars thin.
- This creates holds for people to fall into (especially those with few supports and other problems).
- When things get really bad for those folks, they take to the street, eventually congregating in encampments, which degrades the perception of the area and makes it a less comfortable place in which to live and do business.
- Authorities do their jobs and enforce housing regulations.
- Progressives push to end policing of the encampments.
- This makes the economy and neighborhood even worse, creating more holes for more people.
- Authorities continue to do their jobs and enforce standards for public behavior, particularly related to safety.
- Progressives go after the idea of policing.
- Things get worse.
For an area that’s trending progressive, the only question is where people can muster the fortitude to stop it, and frankly, this sort of homeless encampment is a stark and important threshold. You can’t have people living in such place in such a way. You just can’t.
To be sure, simply clearing them out when they pop up only pauses and moves the problem elsewhere, without helping the people who’ve fallen into those progressive holes, and the action is therefore insufficient, but it’s fundamental backstop. What’s needed is to start pushing that stone back up the hill Of course, progressives will shriek even louder as the society solves the problems of the people progressives are professing to care about, but it’s the only way.
[Open full post]
The details of the U.S. drone strike on a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan are horrific:
The U.S. acknowledged reports of civilian casualties and said they may have been caused by secondary explosions. The family said when the 37-year-old Zemerai, alone in his car, pulled up to the house, he honked his horn. His 11-year-old son ran out, and Zemerai let the boy get in and drive the car into the driveway. The other kids ran out to watch, and the missile incinerated the car, killing seven children and an adult son and nephew of Zemerai.
Is it too much to expect somebody to have eyes on the target when causing massive explosions in residential areas — somebody to get on the radio and say, “Do not fire. We have children present”?
Watching the excuse-making from Democrat Twitter last night, it seemed to me that the sequence of events has to be made part of this discussion. The Biden administration created a dangerous situation with its botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. When there was an inevitable terrorist attack, administration officials felt they had to save face by striking back.
The order was probably something like, “Find me somebody to attack,” and it’s not inconceivable that the Taliban provided the intel on the target.
Yet, the palace-guard media is still on duty. Check out this disgustingly convoluted first paragraph from an AP article that WPRI gives the toned-down headline, “A deadly mistake: Pentagon says drone strike kills 10 civilians“:
American Troops are out of Afghanistan, and it was made known by Pentagon officials that the last airstrike of the war in the country was a mistake.
That’s how the mainstream press opens a story about an American drone strike on the innocent children of a humanitarian worker? The story doesn’t even give the heart-rending details. There’s only one circumstance in which reporters will do that: When they’re trying to protect an incompetent president from their political party for ideological reasons.
Featured image by AFP on The Borneo Post.
[Open full post]