Mediaboss Marketing

^

Keep Dallas Observer Free

Support the independent voice of Dallas and help keep the future of Dallas Observer free.

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Olivia Troye saw the online chatter grow more extreme. Former President Donald Trumps supporters believed the November 2020 election had been rigged in favor of eventual winner Joe Biden. Trumps team challenged election results where they could and Troye couldnt shake the feeling that it wouldnt end well.

An El Paso native, Troye once served as a homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence. Her worries proved prescient on Jan. 6, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. At her home in Virginia, Troye and her family watched the news in horror as the violence unfolded. Many of the rioters wore militia-like tactical gear, many carried arms and some were calling for Troyes old boss, Pence, to be hanged. (Trump falsely claimed Pence had the ability to overturn the election, leading many of his supporters to label the vice president a traitor.)

Troye knew well how volatile the former presidents supporters could be. After she broke with the White House last August over his administrations handling of the pandemic, she went on television and criticized Trump, even predicting the kind of violence that happened on Jan. 6. The threats poured in.

Troye believes Trumps rhetoric, parroted by sycophantic Republican lawmakers, led to that days chaos and deadly violence. And she was furious: Shed dedicated her life to a party that, the way she saw it, had betrayed its principles for power.

Its such a dark moment for our country to watch the fragility of our democracy in action. And the fact that theres this mob attacking the U.S. Capitol and it was like watching a banana republic, right? Troye said. This doesnt look like the United States, but it is happening here.

Some political pundits announced the death of the Republican Party immediately following the insurrection, but its a notion that GOP leaders and experts roundly reject. Even in reliably red Texas, some have prophesied a blue wave, thanks in large part to the state governments failures to manage the fallout from Februarys deadly winter storm.

Its such a dark moment for our country to watch the fragility of our democracy in action." - Olivia Troye, former homeland security adviser to Mike Pence

During the 2020 general election, that blue wave missed Texas and Republicans easily retained majority control of the state Legislature, but with conflict inside the party, the Texas GOP will have to decide: Just how much further to the right does it want to drift?

Troye feels abandoned by the party she once loved. She was appalled when prominent Republican lawmakers from her home state, among them U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, spread the lie that the election was stolen.

Thanks to these lawmakers actions, Texas Republicans are in a critical juncture, Troye said, but not everyone agrees.

*

In the era of Trump, its no surprise that the Texas Republican Party flirted with the extreme right, which surged alongside the former presidents ascent to power. That dalliance escalated last summer, when the states GOP ousted incumbent chair James Dickey and brought on a newcomer to the state: former Florida Congressman Allen West.

Once a star in the Tea Party movement, West has racked up an impressive resume throughout his career in politics, which is now a little more than a decade long. Early on, the 60-year-old ultraconservative made a name for himself attacking political adversaries. He lashed out at former President Barack Obama, whom he called an abject failure and a low-level socialist agitator. In 2015, he described protests against Confederate monuments as a manufactured crisis. Later, he cheered on Trumps pick of Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary, sharing a Facebook meme that said the retired general would exterminate Muslims.

Allen West, the Texas GOP chair, is no fan of Gov. Greg Abbott, a fellow Republican.

Courtesy of Allen West

Once in Texas, West aimed his sights elsewhere. Last summer, he led the conservative charge against a fellow Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott, railing against the governors coronavirus safety restrictions. The move won him fans among the partys ultraconservative base.

Last October, The Texas Tribune reported that West joined other prominent figures, such as far-right conspiracy theorist and InfoWars founder Alex Jones, in protest outside the governors mansion. West demanded that Abbott reopen Texas 100%, even as COVID-19 cases continued to soar statewide and the bodies piled up. Outside the mansion, West spoke to some 200 demonstrators, most of them without masks. His rallying cry? Abbotts safety restrictions were hurting the states businesses,according to Fort Worth talk radio station WBAP.

West confronted Republican critics head-on that day. He told attendees that a county chair also questioned why hed spearhead the effort before voting began for the general election. "I told him that true leaders don't pick and choose when they do what is right," West said, according to The Tribune. "They do what is right all the time."

Wests crusade fueled speculation that he may try to unseat Abbott in 2022. If that happens, the states GOP will face a tough choice: Should it will align with the moderate conservatives in the state Legislature or with the so-called silent majority that helped to elect Trump in 2016?

Going up against Abbott is no small task. Even though West raised impressively for his 2020 chairmanship campaign nearly half a million dollars, according to The Texas Tribune Abbotts fundraising capacities are unmatched. According to Associated Press reports, the governor has secured more than $150 million during his six years in office, more than any other governor in American history.

*

A lifelong Republican, Troye grew up an only child in a middle-class Texas family. She identified with the partys small-government and strong-military platform, and her college thesis made the argument that the GOP was the pro-minority party of Abraham Lincoln. Later, Troye began working for the Republican National Committee in D.C.; as a Latina, she aimed to build coalitions and strengthen minority outreach.

Then, terrorists attacked the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. On her way home from work that day, Troye recalls walking past the still-burning building. It made such an impression on her that she decided to become a career intelligence officer focused on national security issues.

Aside from her work in national security, Troye also served as an adviser on Pences COVID-19 task force. She left her position in August 2020 because of the way that the coronavirus had become politicized. It was frustrating to see the president actively work to discredit and undermine his own administrations health experts. The White House had become less concerned about protecting constituents from a deadly disease than retaining control in the November election, she said.

Because of how extreme Trump's rhetoric had become, Troye could see that the president was slowly radicalizing his base.

When Jan. 6 happened, I kept thinking, This is the culmination of four years of a Donald Trump presidency, she said. These are the moments that I worried about that would come to fruition in our country. And unfortunately, that moment did.

*

Last summer, it wasnt just Allen Wests head-to-head with Abbott that raised eyebrows about which way the Texas GOP was headed. In August, the party adopted a curious new slogan, one that quickly prompted backlash: We are the storm. Critics pointed to the similarity between the new slogan and a term affiliated with the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory. According to Q lore, The Storm refers to a time when Trump would defeat a nefarious satanic cabal of Democratic pedophiles and return the country to greatness.

West didnt budge. The party kept the slogan, and the chairman has adamantly denied any affiliation with QAnon.

Meanwhile, old ideas gained new steam under West. Texas Republicans have kicked around the idea of secession for years, with diehard conservatives calling for a return to state independence. Now, another attempt to abandon the union is on the table again: A bill filed by Fredericksburg state Rep. Kyle Biedermann would allow Texas to opt out of the union through a referendum. Although West recoiled when asked if he supports secession, the chairman endorsed the proposal to break away. Ive said What would be wrong with allowing people to have a vote on the future of Texas? Thats all, he told the Observer.

Ive said What would be wrong with allowing people to have a vote on the future of Texas? Thats all." - Allen West, chairman of Texas GOP.

Nicknamed Texit, the push for secession has generated plenty of headlines, but its an oddball long shot at best, said Thomas Marshall, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Long shot or not, parties boost their fundraising mechanisms when they embrace such ideologically extreme positions, Marshall said; politicians often strategically maintain a more radical stance than voters. In Republicans case, it helps to generate conservative grassroots approval, he said.

Professor Thomas Marshall said extremism in pursuit of Texas Republican votes is no vice but is a good ploy for raising money and profile.

Ashley Gongora

Theres no penalty for being flamboyantly out on the edge, Marshall told the Observer. Even floating issues which are so far out of the mainstream and so unimaginable to pull off that theyre just 72-hour news cycle events, but thats where money flows in from and thats where extremely conservative grassroots people sort of nod and say yes.

Those hardline ideas are making the rounds this legislative session as a swath of anti-abortion bills works its way through the chambers. Some seek to outlaw abortions, even though the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a womans constitutional right to the procedure in 1973. Others would bar abortion after a heartbeat is detected. Filed by Royse City state Rep. Bryan Slaton, one bill would even make abortion a crime that could be punishable by death for women and physicians.

Another bill by state Rep. Justin Holland would turn Texas into a Second Amendment sanctuary state, preventing state agencies from enforcing new federal gun laws.

At the same time, the party has created an account on the far-right social networking site Gab. The Texas GOPs vice chair, Cat Parks, has joined Abbott in condemning the move, deepening the internal rift within the states party.

In a statement on March 9, Parks said she was concerned by the number of anti-Semitic comments she saw on the platform, and there should be no question about where the party stands on bigotry.

But the Republican Party of Texas official Twitter account said in a post that it wouldnt end any of its social media accounts. West had no response to the internal row over Gab, but he did say many Americans feel as though social media networks have censored them, and he calls that fascism. I would have never thought that in the 22 years that I served in the military that I would see fascism taking root here in the United States of America, he said.

Meanwhile, as many Republicans distanced themselves from Trump following the Capitol riot earlier this year, a portion of the GOPs base cried heresy. The discontent was so intense that some even founded their own splinter parties to honor the former president, such as the far-right MAGA Patriot Party, which launched in San Antonio in January. Although Trump has stayed onboard the Republican Party, many of his most loyal supporters have claimed theyll never vote Republican again, including some North Texans who have been charged by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly participating in the Capitol riots.

New parties or not, dissident Trump supporters arent likely to do much damage to the GOP. Rather than siphoning voters from the Republicans, the MAGA Patriot Party and others like it will probably lose steam, said professor Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, chair of the political science department at the University of North Texas. For instance, the populist Tea Party movement that birthed West first emerged in 2009 before fizzling out, but the Republican Party later absorbed its ideologies into its platform, he said.

Even something as shocking as the Jan. 6 insurrection might not stay on voters radars for long, he said. These things are really short-term in the minds of most voters, and they dont seem to have an enduring impact, Eshbaugh-Soha said. If it was going to be an enduring impact, we would have already seen Republicans significantly alter their approach to governance. And were not seeing that.

Then theres the question of leadership. On the national level, Trump is still the partys de facto leader, Marshall said. In fact, when right-wingers from around the country traveled to Florida for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference late last month, Sen. Ted Cruz said Trumpism aint goin nowhere. Trump later took the stage as the keynote speaker.

*

Some Democrats have boldly declared that Texas is now a battleground state. In Texas, Trump beat President Joe Biden by fewer than 6 percentage points during the 2020 election, a tighter margin than Trump won by in 2016.

In Austin, Abbotts likeability has also tanked in recent months over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Liberals decried his decision to end the mask mandate while the coronavirus continues to spread; conservatives, meanwhile, were upset that hed ever set any restrictions at all. That tension has manifested itself in a push in the Texas Legislature to limit the governors emergency powers, with Granbury state Sen. Brian Birdwell leading the charge.

As horrifying as the insurrection was, Eshbaugh-Soha expects that Republicans will find a way to rationalize it rather than supporting a party that has policies they dont agree with. A Jan. 6 YouGov poll even found that 45% of Republicans nationally approved of the storming of the Capitol building. No one event is going to undo an institution that has enormous relevance to voters, members, structures of the political process, Eshbaugh-Soha said.

Professor Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha says Republicans will have no problem getting over the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Courtesy of UNT

More than his policies, it was Trumps rhetoric that has repelled some, especially among suburban women and moderates, admitted Jason Vaughn, policy director for the Texas Young Republicans. At the same time, though, Vaughn insisted that Trump brought in swaths of working-class people and LGBT Republicans. The former president also helped the Republican Party make significant gains among Latino voters in counties along the Mexican border.

Trump mobilized some who had never been politically active before, Vaughn said; many flocked to Trump because they believed he would fight for them. And sometimes people want somebody to express and feel their anger more than they actually want something to be accomplished, he said.

But even as Allen West tries to drag the party further right and Democrats lash out at the governor over Februarys deadly winter storms and repealing the mask mandate, experts say Abbott has managed to keep himself safe from threats internal and external. Marshall said hes still the runaway favorite for 2022, and he sees no reason for the governor to be really worried by either West or the Democrats.

*

Olivia Troyes forecast isnt sunny. She sees the former president as a divisive figure, someone who has inflected a great deal of harm inside the Republican Party. To her, those still supporting Trump are saying theyre OK with the fact that he essentially conspired and incited and contributed to the insurrectionists murderous pursuit of his own vice president.

At some point, GOP lawmakers need to take a stand for whats right for the country, Troye said. Instead of worrying about their voter base, they should break away from Trumpism or else they risk destroying whats left of the Republican Party.

Youve already seen Texas voters starting to take a stand and not being OK with whats happening in the Republican Party and the things that are going on in the Texas party, especially, she said. And youve seen a growing movement of blue, I would say and rightly so.

After the insurrection, Troye cofounded the Republican Accountability Project, an anti-Trump political action committee that created a billboard campaign encouraging Cruz and others to resign. Cruz and Gohmert readily volunteered as enablers of the president, Troye said, and their willingness to spread lies about election fraud helped pave the way for what happened on Jan. 6. Voters need to be reminded of their actions leading up to the next election, she said.

The Republican Accountability Project also supports individuals they view as principled Republicans, people who took a stand against Trump following the insurrection, Troye said. In that vein, the group has created signs thanking conservatives who voted for impeachment. Moderate Republicans need to band together and vote against MAGA candidates, she argued. We have a short-term memory sometimes as voters but we want to make sure that people dont forget. And that they deserve better, Troye said.

I may be a lifelong Republican, she continued, but if theres a principled person who is running to do whats right for the country, thats who Im going to back. And I think that youre going to see that across Texas.

Keep the Dallas Observer Free... Since we started the Dallas Observer, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Dallas, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Dallas with no paywalls.

Simone Carter, a staff news reporter at the Dallas Observer, graduated from the University of North Texas' Mayborn School of Journalism. Her favorite color is red, but she digs Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

The rest is here:
Trump's Gone, but the Texas GOP Keeps Drifting Rightward - Dallas Observer

In his forthcoming book, The Words That Made Us, the Yale law professor Akhil Amar emphasizes that, unlike the Hutcheson mob, the Boston Tea Party was nonviolent (it did not come close to killing anyone), proportionate (the Sons destroyed no more property than necessary), and public spirited and non-piratic (the Sons dumped tea to make a legal and political point). It was, Amar argues, a stylized, highly regulated political protestthe Sons of Liberty even swept the decks of the ships before departingrather than a violent insurrection. As Kramer notes, they also later compensated one of the ship owners for a padlock they broke to seize the tea.

During and after the Constitutional Convention, those who had endorsed crowd action against the British during the American Revolution argued that violent insurrections against legitimately constituted democratic governments were different. Samuel Adams, a leader of the Boston Tea Party and other crowd actions throughout the Revolution, had become governor of Massachusetts in 1787, and he criticized Shays Rebellion as a Tory effort to thwart the principles of the Revolution. Now that the people were represented in and by the government, Adams and others argued, they no longer needed to apply direct pressure on their democratically elected judges and representatives.

Was this rationale merely self-serving, now that Adams and his allies were the ones in power? That conclusion would discount their entire theory of self-government. The American experiment is an attempt to channel the selfish passions of human beings into legitimate politics by creating institutions that promote thoughtful deliberation over the impulses of the moment. The state and federal constitutions ratified from 1776 to 1787 were designed to give we the people (or at least propertied white men) the opportunity to seek a redress of grievances through peaceful assembly, petition, speech, and representation, without resorting to the brutal force of mob action.

Anne Applebaum: What Trump and his mob taught the world about America

Mob violence became further delegitimized in the years leading up to the Civil War, when it took the form of racist attacks on Black people and white abolitionists. In 1837, a young Abraham Lincoln expressed renewed alarm about violent mobs when he warned that, unless Americans could govern themselves by reason rather than passion, the Constitution would fall to demagogues. Lincolns speech The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, delivered to the Young Mens Lyceum of Springfield, Ilinois, was responding to mob violence, including a racist murder in St. Louis and the lynching of the abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy. In his speech, which denounced mobocracy and mentioned the word mob eight times, Lincoln implicitly blamed the violence on the followers of the populist Andrew Jackson, who was known as King Mob. Like Madison, Lincoln warned that the mobs were being egged on by populist demagogues, men of ambition and talents who continue to spring up amongst us, seeking the ratification of their ruling passion by tearing down the government and the laws, rather than supporting and maintaining the edifice erected by the Founders. The only way for the American people to ensure that support of the Constitution and the laws remained the political religion of the nation, Lincoln concluded, was for them to reaffirm their commitment to personal as well as political self-government, to restrain their irrational passions and hatreds with the cool voice of reason..

Read the original here:
The Whole Point Was to Avoid Mob Violence - The Atlantic

This is the perfume of March: rain, loam, feathers, mint. Lisa Kleypas.

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming. Pablo Neruda.

The first blooms of spring always make my heart sing. S. Brown.

Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm. John Muir.

A perfect spring day! Enjoy it while it lasts because you dont know whats coming. Marty Rubin.

Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world." Virgil A. Kraft.

Monarda is a genus of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. Common names include bergamot, bee balm, horsemint and oswego tea. It has a long history of being used as a medicinal herb, and as the common name bee balm implies, it has also been used to soothe bee stings.

Monardo consists of multiple species, most of which are hardy perennials and all of which are native to certain regions of North America. Summertime flowering on all these species is quite attractive to humans and pollinators.

The Oswego Indian tribe used this plant to make an herbal tea and they taught the early American settlers how to do so as well.

This just happened to come in very handy following the Boston Tea Party. As the settlers revolted against the British tax on tea, they drank tea made from Monarda instead, thus thumbing their noses at the British and their taxes.

Monarda punctata (horsemint or dotted mint) is somewhat of an unruly native prairie plant characterized by tall unbranched stems topped with rounded clusters of pink or lavender tubular flowers. The stacked combination of speckled flowers and colorful bracts make this distinctive and unusual.

Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot) is one of the species commonly used for medicinal purposes. Being highly aromatic with showy lavender-pink flowers, it is also used as a honey plant.

Monarda didyma (scarlet bee balm) has long been cherished for not only its use for tea but also its ornamental value. Its bright scarlet/red flowers are still a part of many ongoing breeding programs with Monarda.

It has been a long road from these native species of Monarda to the prized ornamental cultivars available today. Some of the first hybrids of M. didyma x M. fistulosa produced vibrant flower colors with a more well-behaved plant, but they continued to be plagued by their native attributes of being highly susceptible to mildew, somewhat tall and leggy and had a tendency to spread by rhizomes.

Modern breeding has introduced many new cultivars that are much more suitable in the ornamental landscape. Along with many stand-alone varieties with notable attributes of their own, "Marshalls Delight" received Award of Merit from Royal Horticultural Society, "Gardenview Scarlet" was selected by the Chicago Botanic Garden as an outstanding perennial for the Midwest, and Petite Delight was the first of its kind dwarf introduction of monarda at just 12-15 inches tall.

There are several newer Monarda with formidable attributes including Monarda didyma Grand is from the Morden Breeding Program in Manitoba and an exceptionally hardy Monarda. Characterized by a profusion of bright flowers atop mid-sized plants, these also offer very good mildew resistance.

The Sugar Buzz Monardas form a solid dome of color. The 2- to 2 1/2-inches flowers top off the strong stems and deep green foliage of this series. Medium in height at around 20 inches, the eight colors in this series display above-average mildew resistance and stay well contained in the garden.

Balmy Monardas have relatively large flowers on a fully compact plant. Balmy comes in at just 10-12 inches with exceptional mildew resistance and deep green foliage. They are dwarf and mounded, so bring new uses to the landscape.

While some Monarda species come from seed, most newer selections are vegetatively propagated and are quite easy to care for in rich and organic, or just average soils. Monarda will die back to the ground in colder climates. They can then be cut back to one- to two-inch stems. Its also a good idea to remove dead leaves and stems from the area, especially if mildew has been observed on the foliage. As Monarda emerges from the roots/rhizomes in the spring, they may be pinched to create a bushier habit if desired.

In the full sun, they will produce a plethora of brilliant flowers beginning in mid-summer. Pair these with Achillea, Agastache or Phlox for a smooth transition of garden color into fall. As flowers fade, deadheading is beneficial to encourage additional flowering.The plant is deer and rabbit resistant.

Monarda brings a lot of charm and interest to the garden. Mass plantings in naturalized areas are a showstopper and create a high-traffic area for butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. Enjoy these as specimen plants paired with your favorite summer-into-fall bloomers in the middle of the garden.

When they are in full flower (with a few to spare), you can pick a few flowers and leaves to make a batch of iced bee balm tea and watch the garden grow. Or dry some and save it for hot Oswego tea on a cold winters night! This fact sheet is provided as an educational service of the National Garden Bureau and their link is https://ngb.org/year-of-the-monarda.

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, Who lives in you. Romans 8:11.

Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. Proverbs 29:25.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10.

Seagle is a Sustainability Verifier, Golf Environment Organization (Scotland), Agronomist and Horticulturalist, CSI: Seagle (Consulting Services International) LLC, Professor Emeritus and Honorary Alumnus (Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College), Distinguished Professor for Teaching and Learning (University System of Georgia) and Short Term Missionary (Heritage Church, Moultrie). Direct inquiries to csi_seagle @yahoo.com.

Excerpt from:
SEAGLE: In the Year of the Monarda | Opinion | tiftongazette.com - Tifton Gazette

Police Deliver Stern Warning to 82-Year-Old Grandmother Over Afternoon Tea Party With Neighbour.

Police in the UK delivered a stern warning to an 82-year-old grandmother after she had a socially distanced cup of tea with her neighbours in their communal garden. Officers arrived at the 82-year-olds sheltered housing complex home at 9.45 pm to question her about the incident just after she had settled into bed to watch television.

They told the pensioner she had been reported for drinking tea outside with her neighbours, in breach of coronaviruslockdown restrictions.

Her daughter, Lesley Magovern, 56, expressed her disgust over the action police took and could not believe police travelled from Gloucester to Charlton Kings so late for something so ridiculous.

She added, My son works for the London Met and even he could not believe what I was telling him. We all have been left thinking, what a waste of police resources.

Mrs Magovern who has declined to name her mother to protect her from repercussions said she had had a socially distanced cup of tea with three other residents from her complex in Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire, at 1.30 pm on March 9. She added:

My mother heard a knock at the door and it was very late and she wondered really who it could be. My mother is quite deaf and she asked who it was and she thought the voice said Its me. Then mother assumed it was in fact me and she then opened the door.

There were two officers stood there, a man and a woman with masks on and they asked if they could come in and speak to her. They did not show her any identification so she just trusted the uniform and she was quite frightened. My mother has never been in trouble with the police in her life.

When they were there, they told my mother if it were to happen again she would be fined. Then they asked her to provide identification so she was rooting around trying to find some. Finally, she ended up showing them an out-of-date driving licence as that is all she had.

In a statement, a Gloucestershire Police spokesman said: An officer has spoken to the complainant and an explanation was provided in response to concerns raised. She was content with this and the matter has been resolved.

Police received a report of a potential Covid breach on Tuesday 9 March at 1.30 pm suspecting that there was a gathering involving people from multiple households in a residential garden in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. Covid response officers attended later that day at around 9.45 pm where some residents were spoken to and given words of advice around current restrictions.

Officers are deployed to incidents based on an assessment of the threat, risk and harm of the incident and in this case officers who are part of the Covid response team and are deployed across the county attended later that evening.

It is still mandatory to wear masks during the pandemic, Amazon has a great range in stock, click on the link to see them all. https://amzn.to/3826Rmr

Thank you for taking the time to read this news article Police Deliver Stern Warning to 82-Year-Old Grandmother Over Afternoon Tea Party With Neighbour. For more UK daily news, Spanish daily news and Global news stories, visit the Euro Weekly News home page.

More here:
Police Deliver Stern Warning to 82-Year-Old Grandmother Over Afternoon Tea Party With NeighbourNeighbour - Euro Weekly News

Passed only by a single vote in the Senate, President Joe Bidens $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act may lay the basis for overcoming two deep-seated problems that have bedeviled the Democratic Party for decades.

The first is a half-century curse on Democrats ability to maintain unified control of the federal government. As I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed a year ago:

Since 1968, Democrats have controlled both Congress and the White House three times, and each one of those periods ended with a hard turn right. Altogether, the years of unified Democratic government add up to just eight out of the past 52: four when Jimmy Carter was president, and the first two years of Bill Clintons and Barack Obamas first terms. Carters presidency ended with Ronald Reagans election in 1980, Clintons first years with Newt Gingrichs Republican Revolution in 1994, and Obamas first years with the tea party insurgency in 2010.

Even before the pandemic, it was clear that if Democrats won control of both Congress and the presidency, they needed to prioritize early deliverables to the votersvisible material benefitsto avoid repeating the disastrous reversals in midterm elections the party suffered under Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010. The pandemic has made those early deliverables only more urgent, and the big relief bill is providing them. With their narrow majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats will need all the help they can get to retain control.

But short-term measures ought to support a long-term vision, and the relief legislation does that too. Indeed, it advances a second goal that has eluded Democrats for a long time: rebuilding a bottom-up political majority, encompassing both low-income working people and the middle class.

One of the reasons that Clinton and Obama devoted their first two years in office to universal health coverage was its potential for promoting that kind of cross-class support. Universal coverage would help both the uninsured poor and many in the middle class denied protection for pre-existing conditions and facing unaffordable health costs. But although Obama succeeded where Clinton failed, the Affordable Care Act was slow in delivering benefits, and its limitations still prevent it from enjoying the broad cross-class support that Medicare enjoys.

More from Paul Starr

The Biden relief legislation has two key elements, improvements to ACA subsidies and child care tax credits, that extend benefits from the poor into the middle class. Both thereby try to avoid the political weaknesses of programs solely identified with the poor. But both have been enacted on only a temporary basis, and with no votes to spare in the Senate it will be an enormous challenge to make them permanent in a follow-up reconciliation bill before the 2022 election.

Under the ACA, people who enroll for coverage through the insurance marketplaces are eligible for premium subsidies on a sliding-scale basis. Until now, however, the law has cut off subsidies entirely at 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($51,040 for a single person). That cutoff point, or subsidy cliff, may seem reasonable enough, but many people with incomes just above that level face extremely high costs. For example, as Katie Keith points out at Health Affairs, a 60-year-old earning just over the 400 percent cutoff faces an average annual premium of $12,886, or about 25.8 percent of income, not counting out-of-pocket health costs, which may also be substantial. Consequently, many middle-class people dont see the ACA as offering them much financial protection.

Your donation keeps this site free and open for all to read. Give what you can...

SUPPORT THE PROSPECT

The Biden rescue plan, as Jon Walker has argued, finally attempts to make good on the promise of affordable insurance. For 2021 and 2022, it extends subsidies to people above the cutoff, limiting their premiums to 8.5 percent of income. It also increases subsidies at lower incomes; in fact, people with incomes between 100 and 150 percent of the poverty leveland anyone who received unemployment benefits during 2021will be eligible for a silver plan on the marketplace at no premium.

The expanded child tax credits are potentially even more significant as a cross-class measure than the improved health insurance subsidies. Most of the news coverage about the child tax credits has focused on the stunning point that they will cut child poverty nearly in half. But this may obscure the politically crucial fact that the child tax credits are not an anti-poverty program in the sense of being targeted exclusively, or even primarily, to the poor.

Like the expanded ACA subsidies, the relief plans child tax credits have cross-class benefits. The full credit$3,600 per child under age 6, and $3,000 per child from ages 7 to 17will begin to phase out only at incomes well into the middle class ($112,500 for single heads of household; $150,000 for married couples). Even with incomes up to $400,000, couples with children will get partial credits. Many low-income families who do not receive the existing $2,000-per-child credit because their earnings are too low will also benefit from the legislation because it makes the enlarged credit fully refundable, which means that even those without tax liability will be able to receive the credit.

Not only do the child tax credits have potential cross-class support; they also have potential cross-party support because many conservatives see them as a pro-family policy.

The child tax credits are effectively what other countries call family allowances. Some analyses have suggested that in supporting the tax credits, Democrats are reversing the position they took during the 1990s in seeking to end welfare as we know it. Thats true in one sense: The new benefits are not work-related. But, in another sense, the child tax credits are the fulfillment of the promise to end welfare as we know it. Like family allowances elsewhere, the Biden tax credits dont phase out when low-income parents take paying jobs, so they dont have the kind of work disincentive effect that means-tested welfare assistance has had.

Not only do the child tax credits have potential cross-class support; they also have potential cross-party support because many conservatives see them as a pro-family policyindeed, as a policy that supports more traditional families where the mother stays home with young children. The tax credits thereby avoid some of the ideological divisions that have erupted over public subsidies for child care ever since Richard Nixon vetoed child care legislation in 1971.

Nonetheless, the opposition to making the expanded ACA subsidies and child tax credits permanent will be intense. The opponents will claim that making middle-class people eligible for benefits is costly and unnecessary. They will cite data showing that the programs will be more progressive in the strict sense of directing benefits more to the poor if eligibility ends at low incomes. But by limiting benefits to the poor, the opponents will be inviting a return to all the old political and incentive problems of welfare.

Your donation keeps this site free and open for all to read. Give what you can...

SUPPORT THE PROSPECT

Can Democrats succeed in turning these temporary policies into a new foundation for social provision in the United States? For the immediate future, the answer will depend on the Democrats precarious majority in the Senate. In a New York Times op-ed the other day, law professor Paul Campos urged Justice Stephen Breyer to retire immediately because the death or incapacitation of a single Democratic senator over the next 22 months could return Mitch McConnell to the position of majority leader, once again able to obstruct a Democratic Supreme Court nominee. Campos pointed out that six Democratic senators over age 70 represent states with Republican governors who could replace them with a Republican; five Democrats represent states where vacancies would go unfilled for months until an election. A single loss in one of these states would also likely end hopes for progressive reform in this Congress, including the extension of the ACA subsidies and child tax credits.

With their tenuous Senate majority, Democrats ought to be in a hurry to do whatever they can on infrastructure, taxes, and other issues. They have already made the most out of the leastthe most substantial relief measure conceivable with the thinnest possible Senate majority. If they can turn that relief measure into a permanent transformation of social policy, it will be one of the most brilliant acts of liberal political magic we have seen in a very long time.

The rest is here:
The Precarious Greatness of the Biden Strategy - The American Prospect