The great improvement in health that high-income countries experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not a result of better medicine -- as William McNeill claimed -- or even economic growth per se. It was, rather, the consequence of political decisions to make massive investments in drinking water, sanitation, housing and poverty reduction.
- Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A history of the world in eight plagues
This week's featured posts are "Is Donald Trump Still Rich?" and "What Republicans Want". The two posts together are quite long, so I'll be a little terser than usual in this weekly summary.
I intend the quote above as a general comment on the House Study Committee's report on its FY 2025 budget proposals (the subject of "What Republicans Want"). If 19th century leaders had demonized "spending" the way the HSC does, we'd still be having cholera epidemics.
This week everybody was talking about Trump's finances
At the last minute, the NY Appeals Court lowered Trump's bond to $175 million and gave him ten more days to pay. My take on the Trump-bond issue is in one of the featured posts.
The other Trump-related thing happening today is a hearing on his New York criminal case, the one concerning the fraudulent business records that hid his payoff to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election. What most observers expect to come out of today's hearing is a trial date in April.
and funding the government
We finally have an FY 2024 budget. President Biden signed a keep-the-government open bill Saturday morning.
House conservatives are of course unhappy that the government is going to keep governing. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to recall Speaker Johnson, but did it in such a way that it won't immediately come to the floor. She's being coy about exactly what would cause her to force a vote.
and Gaza
The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for a Ramadan ceasefire. The US abstained. Meanwhile, Israel agreed to a US proposal to exchange prisoners for hostages, but Hamas says there are still issues to be resolved.
An excellent Economist article outlines the problems Israel faces.
There is still narrow path out of the hellscape of Gaza. A temporary ceasefire and hostage release could cause a change of Israel’s government; the rump of Hamas fighters in south Gaza could be contained or fade away; and from the rubble, talks on a two-state solution could begin, underwritten by America and its Gulf allies. It is just as likely, however, that ceasefire talks will fail. That could leave Israel locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation. Today many Israelis are in denial about this, but a political reckoning will come eventually. It will determine not only the fate of Palestinians, but also whether Israel thrives in the next 75 years.
If you are a friend of Israel this is a deeply uncomfortable moment. In October it launched a justified war of self-defence against Hamas, whose terrorists had committed atrocities that threaten the idea of Israel as a land where Jews are safe. Today Israel has destroyed perhaps half of Hamas’s forces. But in important ways its mission has failed.
The left wing of the Democratic Party has been skeptical of Israel for some while now. So it's not surprising that AOC told Jake Tapper yesterday that Israel had "crossed a threshold" that justifies use of the very serious term "genocide". Most progressives are reluctant to consider Israel's post-Holocaust mission as a special case, and instead see the Palestinians as just another victim of Western colonialism. (Among European nations, Ireland in particular identifies with Palestine, casting Israel in the role England played in Irish history, right down to causing a famine.)
What's new is that the Netanyahu government has alienated such committed pro-Israel Democrats as Chuck Schumer. It seems determined to alienate President Biden as well, as it announced an expansion of West Bank settlements (which the US regards as illegal) during a recent visit by Secretary of State Blinken. In a policy shift, the US recently backed a ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council, only to see it vetoed by Russia and China.
A recent Pew Research poll found Americans marginally supporting Israel's conduct of the war, with 38% finding it either completely or somewhat acceptable, compared to 34% who found it completely or somewhat unacceptable. This is a remarkably small margin given Americans' longstanding sympathy with Israel, and it could quickly vanish if the famine that the World Food Programme calls "imminent" becomes a reality that Americans regularly see on their TVs.
Jared Kushner is thinking about Gaza's "valuable waterfront property" that might become available for development after Israel moves current residents to the Negev Desert. (Plans for such a move have not been announced. So far, I think, this is just Jared's fantasy.)
and the Moscow terrorist attack
Armed men attacked a shopping-and-entertainment complex in Moscow Friday while a concert was underway. So far 137 people are known to be dead. An offshoot of ISIS has claimed responsibility, but Putin really wants to link Ukraine to the attack.
and you also might be interested in ...
North Carolina Republicans have gotten a lot of bad press nationally for their loony candidate for governor, Mark Robinson. But the rest of the ticket is pretty far out too. Their nominee for State Superintendent of Public Instruction is Michele Morrow, who defeated the incumbent Republican Catherine Truitt in the GOP primary.
She called public schools “socialist indoctrination centers” and accused Truitt of allowing pedophiles to flourish in schools. ... Morrow grabbed national attention last week when CNN ran a story highlighting her social media posts that advocated executing prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Instead of trying to equivocate, she doubled down with a tweet accusing Obama of committing treason for drone attacks on “hundreds of innocent Muslims in Yemen.”
North Carolina is not that red a state any more. Due to gerrymandering, its legislature has a substantial Republican majority. But the state also has a two-term Democratic governor (Roy Cooper, who can't run for a third term), and Trump carried it in 2020 by less than 75K votes out of more than 5 million.
Facing attention from Congress (particularly Bernie Sanders), a couple big drug makers (AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim) cut the price of their inhalers to $35 per month from as much $645. The other two major suppliers (Teva and GSK) so far have not responded.
There's a lot of competition to be the wackiest red-state legislature, but Tennessee is definitely in the running.
Last Monday, the Tennessee Senate has passed SB2691, including an amendment "to prohibit the intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight". According to The Tennessean, the amendment is based on the chemtrail conspiracy theory, which holds that the contrails of airplanes contain chemicals "sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public".
But don't worry, good citizens of Tennessee, your legislature is on the case.
and let's close with something unexpected
Once in a while, days don't go the way you planned. Buzzerilla collects a few examples.
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