First order of business: Please join me on Substack Notes, where I’ll post short updates on previous posts, what’s coming up on Crime and Punishment plus the research I’m doing for these future posts, along with other news that helps explain “why the poor stay poor” in America and what we can do to break the cycle. Of course, I’ll also alert you to some of my favorite writing on Substack. I’ve published my first Note here. Stay tuned for more!

I’ve put together a few, recent interviews and articles that help at least partly explain the thinking of our government and those we elect and appoint to run its business. How, in one of the richest countries on Earth, did we lose well over one million people to Covid? Why do we continue to impose increasingly higher barriers to the poor receiving government help? And will we allow states to subvert the will of the people? Read on.

— First up, an interview in this week’s New York Times Magazine with Dr. Anthony Fauci, discussing what went right and wrong in the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Clearly, that is an oversimplification of this extensive interview, but each of us, along with scientists and public health experts must examine the minutia now, so we don’t make the same mistakes and do better the next time.

Spoiler alert: Dr Anthony Fauci is alive and well and NOT locked up at Guantanamo Bay.

Fauci: The divisiveness was palpable, just in trying to get a coherent message across of following fundamental public-health principles. I understand that there will always be differences of opinion among people saying, “Well, what’s the cost-benefit balance of restriction or of masks?” But when you have fundamental arguments about things like whether to get vaccinated or not — that is extraordinary.

— This is a piece from a February 2023 issue of The New Republic that takes on Representative Matt Gaetz’s insistence on work requirements for Medicaid, and to expand existing work requirements for food stamps and other government help. See my previous post on this issue here.

…Imposing work requirements on millions of people just so they can receive health care—or even put food on the table—is draconian… And the more problems one has to deal with—like an inability to obtain health care or medicine—the less one is able to live fully, let alone work sufficiently. So not only is the policy undesirable morally, it is not even effective economically.

— The great state of Ohio is not exempt from doing an “end around” the will of the voters. This analysis by the Washington Post explains exactly what the Republican controlled legislature and Republican governor, Mike DeWine have planned to thwart a proposed ballot measure for this November’s election that would guarantee women’s rights to reproductive health care, including abortion.

The legislature is proposing a bill that would amend Ohio’s constitution to require that all ballot measures pass by 60% or more of the popular vote. Currently, the requirement is, and has been for 111 years, a simple majority of 50% of the vote plus 1. Governor Dewine has agreed to approve a special election for this August to amend the state’s constitution…and if amended, the 60% majority would apply to the reproductive rights ballot measure proposed for just a few months later in November.

This is part of a broader pattern that spreads beyond Ohio and the issue of abortion. It speaks to the state of contemporary politics and the mind-set of many Republican elected officials, who are using their power in state legislatures to undo rules that they see as unfavorable to them.

And

This recent article from the Columbus Dispatch focuses on what Ohio’s former governors are saying about the Ohio legislature’s move to change the state’s constitution: Republican and Democrat alike are against the change.

Ohio is stronger when we can all lend our voices and we all have an equal chance to participate in the work of our state's democracy," former Republican Gov. John Kasich said. "I’ve experienced that firsthand having policies backed by myself and a majority of the legislature's members overturned at the ballot box and it never occurred to me to try to limit Ohioans' right to do that. It wouldn't have been right then, and it isn't right now.

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