Bridge Collapse Snarls Supply Lines for Everything but Metaphors
March 29: GOPer opposes bridge funding … Mayorkas impeachment … Gaza famine … Crystal Mason …
Tuesday’s collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key bridge has divided commuters from their workplaces, shippers from their ports, and Republicans from each other and/or sanity.
Pres. Joe Biden has said that the federal government will pay to build a new bridge. That’ll mean using some emergency funds already allocated, and allocating new spending. The Department of Transportation turned over an initial installment of $60 million yesterday.
Thirty-eight Navy contractors and 32 people from the Army Corps of Engineers are now working to clear the channel, and a crane capable of lifting 1000 tons is arriving today.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) yesterday told The Hill “The very thought of having the Federal Government pay for the Baltimore bridge is TOTALLY ABSURD!!”
It’s unclear how many illions it will cost to restore the port and the bridge, but officials are pretty clear it’ll involve ‘b’s.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) yesterday said, “It was kind of outrageous immediately for Biden to express in this tragedy the idea that he’s going to use federal funds to pay for the entirety [of the bridge].” He told Fox, “First reaction, frankly the only reaction, tends to be to spend.”
It’s not clear how Meuser thinks bridges get built without spending. Or whether he believes tax cuts would lead to the appearance of a new bridge. In fact, in all of America’s history, there’s no record of a single bridge being built by the Invisible Hand, even Jesus’s.
Meuser said the money could come from the cargo ship’s insurance company — which, duh. In fact, that’s just what Biden’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the day before Meuser opened his talking-hole on Fox.
Meuser also said that the U.S. could seek money from Singapore where the ship is flagged. Set aside for a moment that Meuser is implying that Singapore should have had tighter regulations, the bigger point is that he’s talking about how to raise the money. Nothing Biden said about spending ruled out any methods the U.S. might use to recoup that money after the fact.
Also, as of this morning, the federal government still had no estimate for how much it will cost to construct bridges between Meuser’s synapses.
But balking at spending is a now-typical Republican response to pledges of federal spending after a disaster. Unless it’s in their district.
What’s different among Republicans today is a lack of coherence in the party’s choice of intellectual incoherence. Because at the same time Meuser was complaining about future infrastructure spending, another Republican was complaining about not enough past infrastructure spending; spending that her party opposed, obvi.
On Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) complained about funds authorized by the 2021 infrastructure-spending act, saying, “We’re not spending it on roads and bridges.” Anyone recall a single Republican voting against the bill because they wanted more spending on surface transportation?
Mace herself may have taken credit for some of the federal spending that’s resulted in her state, but she voted against it. (Scientists tell us that it’s not unusual for ganglial twitching to feel like thinking.)
Only one Republican that I saw, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TX), seemed to understand the implications of the fact that the Key Bridge was part of an interstate highway. “My first inclination would be to — yes, that the federal government would pay for it and then they’d collect on the insurance,” Burchett said like a sane person. “Commerce would suffer ‘till we get our act together,” he added like a sane person incapable of prioritizing any aspect of life other than commerce.
Some people use bridges to go on picnics, goddammit people.
But Burchett was the exception. As a party that prioritizes individual autonomy (to choose among the shitty options you’re left with when you prioritize individual autonomy) even over collective action that maximizes the options people have, most Republicans don’t seem to understand that Baltimore’s bridge and port connect people.
The Port of Baltimore is the ninth biggest in the U.S. in terms of the weight and dollar value of all the shit that comes through it, some of which we actually need!
It is the number-one port in the country when it comes to importing and exporting the farm equipment and cars and light trucks that we depend on to destroy our climate.
And the bridge is a major link between New York and Philadelphia and Washington and Baltimore, basically the eastern seaboard. It’s the closest East Coast port to the Midwest and one third of the country lives within a single day’s drive. This is about more than Baltimore. No man is an island, etc., etc.
Meanwhile, on the same day we learned that at least one of the six dead immigrant workers didn’t have the proper documentation while he was working to fix our bridge for us or when he died in its collapse, House Republicans announced when they’ll send articles of impeachment to remove the Department of Homeland [sic] Security (DHS) secretary for not stopping enough undocumented immigrants from coming in to fix our bridges and die for our commutes.
On April 10, the House will send the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, which could open his trial the following day.
Mayorkas is accused of not locking up every single suspected undocumented immigrant and of telling Congress he’s doing a great job — crimes every single one of his predecessors also committed.
(As I reported, the House staffers who led the Mayorkas impeachment have ties to and training from an array of right-wing and even theocratic, anti-democratic organizations and individuals.)
The Senate is expected to reject the articles of impeachment, handing yet another loss to theocratic, right-wing, Christian nationalist Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
International Court of Justice Orders Israel to Ensure Gaza Supplies
In a new order yesterday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) instructed Israel to open additional crossings into Gaza and stop impeding the delivery of aid because people are starving and dying of thirst.
The order is expected to be about as effective as a similar order on Jan. 26, after which “catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further,” the court itself noted about its own impotence.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that it’s providing aid, denied blocking any, and “will continue to promote new initiatives, and to expand existing ones, in order to enable and facilitate the flow of aid.”
Relief organizations, however, have complained of limited crossings and excessive inspection backlogs at the few that are open. As the court said yesterday, the risk of famine is no longer an issue. “Famine is setting in.”
At least 27 children and four adults have died of causes related to dehydration or malnutrition, local and UN health officials say.
Unconstitutional Map Gives Republicans a Hand in the House
A federal court yesterday said that South Carolina can go ahead and use its unconstitutional, racist, anti-democratic congressional-districting map in this year’s elections for the House of Representatives because why the fuck not.
The Supreme Court had heard a challenge to those maps in October — because the maps are unconstitutional, racist, and anti-democratic — but hasn’t issued a ruling yet, presumably because Justice Clarence Thomas has been too buy partying in the Maldives with billionaires.
The state has an April 27 deadline to send out its first absentee ballots for the June 11 primary. So the federal court — which already ruled that the map is unconstitutional — ruled yesterday that, “With the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical.”
In other words, unless the Supreme Court steps in, its inaction will have forced on an entire state racist congressional maps that disenfranchised thousands of Black voters and protected Republican seats.
THE BIGGER PICTURE With redistricting battles around the country largely over now, Politico reports that Republicans actually emerged with an edge over Democrats. And Politico is uncharacteristically un-objective about why:
“The GOP came out ahead thanks to the redistricting aggression of North Carolina Republicans — and the timidity of New York Democrats.” [Emphasis added for shaming.]
Republicans in North Carolina were enabled by a Republican court that reversed a previous ruling blocking them from gerrymandering three seats for themselves. But it was New York where Democratic hopes really fell short.
Previous Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) had shot his party in the foot before shooting his career in the face by shooting off his mouth with women, by enabling congressional maps that helped Republicans seize control of the House last year.
With new Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) in place, there had been hopes to rectify that for the 2024 elections. But after an independent commission failed to do so with its proposed map, Politico reports, “The Democratic-dominated state legislature signaled it was unhappy with that map and would make changes of its own — but then only made minor tweaks.”
In short, the makeup of the body that will certify the 2024 presidential election — or won’t — may already have been largely determined.
Remember That Black Woman Sentenced to Five Years in Prison for Voting?
In 2018, Crystal Mason, a Black Texas woman, was sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting despite still being on supervised release for a past violation of tax law. Mason appealed, claiming the prohibition against voting wasn’t made clear to her.
Just being arrested while on supervised release, however, meant she spent several months in federal prison, before being freed while she appealed her conviction. She lost her job. And almost lost her home.
Yesterday, almost eight years after she voted in the 2016 elections, a Texas appeals court overturned Mason’s conviction. (h/t)
“[T]he evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support the conclusion that Mason actually realized that she voted knowing that she was ineligible to do so and, therefore, insufficient to support her conviction for illegal voting,” wrote Justice Wade Birdwell, before stepping back into whichever novel was written by an author who names their characters “Wade Birdwell.”
While it still sucks giant, Texas-sized shit that the law still prescribes years in prison for a single vote cast by someone deprived of their right to vote, today, at least, Crystal Mason will no longer be a victim of that law.
MEANTHEFUCKWHILE Georgia Republican Party First Vice Chairman Brian Pritchard, a conservative talk-radio host, was fined $5,000 on Wednesday for illegally voting nine separate times despite a felony conviction for forgery and having made multiple statements that no prior felony convictions prohibited him from voting.
Pritchard’s actions not only led to my flagrant overuse of italics, but preceded Pritchard saying when he ran for party office last year that he wanted to “leverage the influence of the grassroots conservative movement to improve election integrity.”
Pritchard claimed the accusations against him were an attempt to “manipulate an election” and that Pres. Joe Biden stole the presidency. Five-thousand-dollar fine.
Unions Level Up
(Editor’s Note: I’m not a gamer — I used to play Doom at work, but since I became a dad, it’s Tiny Tanks on Roblox for me — so please insert videogame-related terms wherever appropriate in puns referring to union activities. Thank you for your service)
Labor organizers have started turning the gaming industry into a multi-player activity (see what I mean? Terrible).
Workers at Sega have officially ratified their first collective-bargaining contract, as members of the new Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS-CWA), which is organized under the massive Communication Workers of America.
They’ve already locked in benefits, layoff protections, raises for this year through 2026, in-game credits, and bonus treasure chests and, uh, hit points? (Dammit!)
This is after Sega fought back against the unionization. Sega tried — and partially succeeded — laying off 40% of the AEGIS-CWA bargaining unit.
And although this is being reported as the first big gaming company to unionize, more than 600 Activision quality-control testers have already joined a union, and other companies have unionized, as well.
RNC Weighs Punishing NBC for Doing What RNC Did
The same Republican National Committee (RNC) that ousted Ronna McDaniel as chair is now considering punishing NBC for ousting McDaniel from her chair.
After NBC abruptly decided that McDaniel’s stint would end after four days, at a rate of $150,000 per day, the RNC said yesterday it may restrict NBC’s operations at this summer’s Republican National Convention (RNC, wait, didn’t we use that acronym already?)
Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the RNC and the Trump campaign — because of course the two entities have the same spokesperson — told Politico, “We are taking a hard look at what this means for NBC’s participation at the convention.” Just the fact that both the RNC and the RNC refer to it as NBC’s “participation,” rather than, I dunno, “hard-hitting coverage” — tells you all you need to know.
The reality is that network news convention coverage rarely includes any kind of journalism that couldn’t be done from a remote studio. And although conventions are supposed to be democratic events at which delegates actually decide things, the RNC says that won’t be the case at the RNC. It’s a show!
“Our priority is making sure this is a world class event that allows President [Donald] Trump to feature his message and vision in a fair way,” said Alvarez, who is paid to say things like that, as she will undoubtedly explain during her first appearance in her undoubtedly imminent gig as a network news contributor.
TCB
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