canflam

For most doctors I agree that it would go against their nature. States are still going to need doctors though, so perhaps for some it's not as easy a decision. Businesses are already leaving or planning to states with abortion restrictions, such as Ely Lilly in Indiana, which is a pharmaceutical company.

In other news, Mar-a-Lago has reportedly been searched by the F.B.I. for "classified material". By the way in case ones forget, current F.B.I. Director Chris Wray was appointed by Trump after he fired Jim Comey.

sunnykerr

I wouldn't have been shocked if a U.S. pharmaceutical company had come down on the side of the crazies when it comes to abortion. Even though, obviously, a pharmaceutical company should think first about the health of its workforce and probably a little about the scientific merit of some decisions as well. But I'm happy to be surprised by Eli Lilly. Good on them.

That Alex Jones cellphone sure turned out to have some juicy tidbits in it if even a Trump toady can't justify ignoring it. I expect they won't come back with anything incriminating, though. That'll have been destroyed or it will be upon discovery. I mean, what's the point of having a FBI director in your pocket if you can't be above the law?

canflam

Well, that's Trump's logic as he did fire Comey for not doing what he wanted. This Mar-a-Lago story is getting stranger. The F.B.I. according to The Washinton Post searched Mar-a-Lago for documents on nuclear weapons. A.G. Merrick Garland is going to give Trump a chance to make the search warrant of his home available to the public. Details of classified documents will be redacted undoubtedly. I would pay to see Din Trump Sr. go on the stand to discuss this or anything for that matter. I know that likely will not happen in his lifetime, but I would certainly watch if possible.

sunnykerr

As much as it's impossible to live in this world and not be saturated with U.S. culture and politics, I don't know how often the Espionage Act has been put on a warrant to search the property of a former president.

I'm not even sure how serious an allegation that is to put on such a warrant.

I do know Donald J. Trump himself apparently leaked the warrant to Breibart, without redacting any of the information on it, including the names of the government employees simply doing their jobs in executing said warrant.

I mean, Scooter Libby went to jail for leaking Valerie Plame's identity to the media, but of course she was a covert government agent. So it's probably different when it's just your run-of-the-mill agents.

And, also, times have changes. Trump's already gotten away with stuff that wouldn't have flown 10-15 years ago.

canflam

Yeah. There's a lot to get into about Trump lately particularly & Rudy Giuliani. There is some news out of Pennsylvania though. Dr. Oz as many know has been running for a Senate spot there vs. John Fetteman. & it has not been going well for the campaign of Dr. Oz. I saw on YouTube an ad that his campaign put out attacking John Fetterman. In it it had Fetteman's head the top of it that is open up with "prisoners" coming out of it, because he supposedly wants to "release one-third of all prisoners". It also mentioned among other things that he wants to "socialize medicine" & an image of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared holding a sign reading "Free Healthcare For Everyone" in all caps. Free healthcare is to some a bad thing I think. Finally it had Bernie Sanders appearing & the ad blaming him for Medicare for all, among spending money, & releasing prisoners. Just bizarre. Legalizing marijuana & giving healthcare to everyone should not be controversial in my opinion any more, but to whomever is running the campaign of Dr. Oz, I guess they are. By the way, the G.O.P. reportedly is pulling money out of this Pennsylvania Senate race.

sunnykerr

Dr Oz, son of an immigrant, campaigns on anti-immigrant sentiment so, you know... How can anything surprise anyone after that? It's very disappointing. He apparently was quite a talented cardiologist. I suppose it goes to show that even smart and talented people can get caught up in this conspiracy BS.

Have you heard how Elon Musk is now saying he's buying Manchested United FC? After the Twitter thing, I wonder if anyone is taking him seriously about these claims anymore.

This is why I don't understand why we let corporate giants have so much power in our society. They're completely divorced from reality and can do nothing but make everything worse for everyone.

canflam

Hmm. Well, I did not know about Musk being internet in purchasing Manchester United, but after that Twitter fiasco he had trying to buy that company, I'll believe he will be owner of a football club when I see it happen & u til then I'm not too worried about it.

OK, so I'm not at at computer tonight, but I saw on YouTube from the KGW News page there, that's an NBC affiliate by the way, that at the Clackamas County Fair in Canby, OR, which is just 10 or so miles south of here a video has been put up of Oregon State Representative James Hieb being intoxicated & arrested by police at the Clackamas County Fair last week. The police asked for his I.D. & he did not or could not give it to them. Smoking is not allowed on Clackamas County Fairgrounds & Hieb was asked to put out a cigarette, but would not do it or leave the Fairgrounds when asked to. He said that he wasn't told to leave by any Fairgrounds employees. I guess this is mostly melodrama, but typically Congressmen do not get arrested on camera & at a fair. I wish him well in sobering up being a better Representative of his district.

There's other stuff going on as well with people being angered by Biden giving student debt relief to people. There's also that search warrant affidavit to Mar-a-Lago that was released.

sunnykerr

If Ryan Reynolds can own a British football club, I don't think there's anything preventing ELon Musk from doing so. But after the Twitter thing, I do feel like whatever he says can't be taken seriously by anyone, including investors.

I'm not shocked or angered by a politician being caught on camera drunk. People get drunk all the time. If he wasn't driving, it's none of my business.

I'd be more worried if he was soliciting a minor, using his office to enrich himself or his family or using his office ot pass laws restricting the civil and human rights of his electorate.

canflam

Yes. There's some sad news today. Michael Gorbachev has died at age 91. Here's a link to more on him: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/w...chev-dead.html

I did not I think know much of Gorbachev growing up. I was only 7 in a half when the Soviet Union collapsed. May he rest in peace.

sunnykerr

I wasn't much older, but I remember it vividly. We really did think the world was going to be better going forward. How naive we all were.

It's interesting that he got there by trying to hold on to his power as the head of the USSR. And, here we are, 30 years later and we're back at square one.

I wonder if they said anything about it in Russia. And, if they did, I wonder how Putin will try to spin it. Because, even though it wasn't what he was aiming for at first, Gorbachev really became a force for reform (glasnost) and transparency or openness (perestroika) with the people.

Anyway, he earned his rest.

canflam

Certainly did. In more news there is a water crisis in Mississippi & that is to some not surprising. Here's more on this:


How Jackson, Mississippi, ran out of water

A crisis that’s left thousands of residents with no running water was decades in the making.

The water system in Jackson, Mississippi, the state’s capital and largest city, failed earlier this week.

On Tuesday, most of the city’s 150,000 residents were without safe drinking water, prompting the state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, to declare a state of emergency. He warned that there wasn’t enough running water “to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.” It’s not clear when the city will have safe drinking water again, Reeves said.

On the surface, the apparent cause of this crisis is damaged infrastructure: Recent flooding strained the city’s largest water treatment plant, O.B. Curtis, which was already dogged with problems. Plus, there was another issue with water pumps at a secondary treatment facility known as J.H. Fewell. As a result, many of the city’s water towers remain nearly empty, leaving the system without enough water or water pressure to fill pipes in homes, schools, and businesses.

But the roots of this crisis run much deeper, and are inextricably tied to white disinvestment from a majority-Black city. Jackson’s water system — which serves a population that is more than 80 percent Black — has been burdened with problems for many years, largely because white flight drained the city of resources. The state’s Republican legislature has also failed to provide the majority-Democrat city with adequate funding for repairs.

“Ideally, infrastructure serves as a shared foundation for economic, environmental, and public health between different neighborhoods and municipalities,” scholars at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit research group, wrote in March 2021, after Jackson faced another severe water shortage. “However, infrastructure is often poorly maintained or intentionally overlooked in particular places, leading to a lack of access, affordability, and safety for many communities of color.”

With a vulnerable water system, the city is also more susceptible to the impacts of extreme weather events like flooding, underscoring — like so many other events worldwide — how climate change often disproportionately harms people of color and lower-income communities.

Why isn’t there water?

Thousands of Jackson residents have no running water in their sinks, showers, and toilets, largely due to a lack of water pressure. Any water they do have is not safe to drink, according to state health officials, who advised citizens to drink bottled water instead, or to boil tap water for at least one full minute.

Jackson water is at risk for contamination. For safety, disinfect water by bringing it to a rolling boil for at least a minute, and using it when it cools for drinking, cooking, baby formula and brushing teeth. For more water safety precautions, see https://t.co/EIQ03u69ks pic.twitter.com/5BTLMgepnY
— MS Dept of Health (@msdh) August 30, 2022

There are two main issues affecting Jackson’s water system, according to the latest reports.

Days of torrential rain in August flooded Mississippi’s Pearl River and the Ross R. Barnett Reservoir — a 33,000-acre lake that provides water to Jackson. Before that water makes it into homes, it passes through the O.B. Curtis treatment plant.

Floodwaters often contain large amounts of contaminants from runoff that can be hard to filter and change the water’s chemistry. That can, in turn, strain treatment plants and slow down the speed at which treated water fills the city’s water towers, many of which are at extremely low levels. Without water in these towers, there’s not much water pressure to feed the city’s system.

The other problem has to do with water pumps. For weeks now, the main pumps at the Curtis plant — the city’s largest facility — have been out of service and the plant has been relying, instead, on weaker backup pumps. Those backup pumps may have malfunctioned and were processing less water. There may have also been an issue with water pumps at the smaller, secondary Fewell plant, which prevented it from increasing output to fill some of the gap in water supply.

(There’s been some disagreement among city and state officials about which water pumps have failed. This is a developing story; details of the many points of failure are still emerging.)
A crisis years in the making

The current water crisis, though devastating, is just one example of how Jackson’s water system, and state legislators, have been failing the city’s majority-Black residents.

Since July, well before the floods and pump failures, the city had been under a boil water notice, after the state health department detected levels of turbidity, or cloudiness, that violated state health regulations. These kinds of notices are incredibly common in Jackson — health regulators have issued several of them in the last couple of years alone. (The current situation is more dire than just a boil water notice. “Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale,” Reeves said at a press conference.)

In the winter of 2021, a similarly severe water crisis played out, after a winter storm caused pipes and water mains to burst. It left tens of thousands of people without water; in some cases, the shortages lasted for a few weeks.

In other words: Jackson’s water system has been broken for a while.

There’s an important and complicated history that led up to this point — Mississippi Today has a great explainer. But one key problem is this: The city’s water infrastructure has languished for decades because there isn’t enough tax revenue or state funds to pay for essential upgrades.

Wealthier white people fled Jackson, starting in the ’70s and ’80s, following the integration of public schools, which eroded the city’s tax base. Jackson is now nearly 83 percent Black, up from 47 percent Black in 1980, and roughly a quarter of its residents are below the poverty line. That means there’s far less public money for repairing the city’s infrastructure, some of which is more than 100 years old.

Ongoing tensions between the city and state have only made infrastructure upgrades more challenging. While spreading out the cost of repairs to the state would help cover the expenses, many white people in the suburbs aren’t compelled to help and many Jackson residents fear ceding control of such a vital service, Mississippi Today’s Anna Wolfe reported last year.

“It’s twofold,” Wolfe wrote. “Systemic racism is an unmistakable underlying cause for Jackson’s stripped resources, and while it may be clouded by a mutual distrust today, racism continues to prevent future investment.”

What’s next for Jackson

The current water shortage could last through the week, officials said, although there’s already some indication that water pressure is improving.

In the meantime, the city will continue doling out cases of bottled water. The demand was so high in some locations that residents waited in mile-long lines and the supply temporarily ran out.

The city is now racing to repair the water treatment plants and install a rented emergency water pump. Earlier this week Gov. Reeves also activated the National Guard to provide assistance, and late Tuesday President Joe Biden declared an emergency for Mississippi, which will funnel federal money into Jackson.

But these efforts will do little to prevent another crisis from unfolding in the months ahead. Jackson needs long-term fixes and sustained investments, amounting to, at minimum, $1 billion to fix the current issues and billions more for long-term fixes, according to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

Federal funding could help — President Biden’s infrastructure bill will provide Mississippi with $75 million in funding for water infrastructure, some of which will likely go to Jackson.

But ultimately, fixing the city’s water system will require addressing deep inequalities that have long starved the city of essential resources, further strengthening racial divides. It’s these inequalities that make cities like Jackson so vulnerable, which is especially worrisome considering that climate change may make floods in Mississippi and other communities of color more common.

https://www.vox.com/2022/8/31/233296...i-water-crisis

sunnykerr

Public administration isn't easy even in places that actually understand the importance of government oversight. I imagine it's even worse in places where people don't understand that government isn't just there to boss you around for funsies.

canflam

Yeah. What a mess. In more news, Democrat Mary Peltola has reportedly won vs. Sarah Palin in an Alaskan House of Representatives election tonight. Well done by her & Alaskans.

sunnykerr

Good job on Alaskans for electing a Democrat. I have to believe Sarah Palin had no shot. Surely the Trump years taught people that incompetence is dangerous.

Firecrest

That was a pleasant surprise for me!