▪ This morning’s Los Angeles Times reports on public health officials’ guarded optimism that a surging coronavirus may be poised to recede (“California desperate for signs of a turnaround after stunning coronavirus setbacks”). Hope, as much as reason, appears to ground their views. And though there are numerous positive signs, the coronavirus still has the upper hand.
The impact of coronavirus has fallen most heavily on essential workers, residents in institutional settings (nursing homes, prisons), and people of color.
“The epidemic in the West is particularly among the Latinx community. … They are both in urban, as well as rural, agricultural areas,” said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco. “There’s tremendous amount of transmission in Southern California, in particular in Orange and Los Angeles counties.”
▪ David Corn reported last week that Steven Miller’s maternal grandmother, Ruth Glosser, died recently of respiratory arrest as a result of a COVID-19 infection, which her son David Glosser (brother to Miller’s mother) has blamed on the Trump administration’s failures to address the threat from coronavirus:
David Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist and passionate Trump critic who has publicly decried Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, and he contends that Trump’s initial “lack of a response” to the coronavirus crisis led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans who might have otherwise survived. In an interview, he says, “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting.”
Mrs. Glosser was living in a Los Angeles area assisted living facility. Los Angeles County, with a population exceeding 10 million, has more coronavirus cases than any other county in the country. Long term care facilities (as noted above) have been especially hard hit in the county and the state.
▪ Former California Senator Barbara Boxer has admitted making a mistake when she voted to establish the Department of Homeland Security. While I agree that this was a mistake, I’m not sure what to make of her belated misgivings:
Here’s where I went wrong: I never imagined that a president would use unconfirmed puppets like acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, to terrorize our own citizens in our own country. Our goal then had been to protect our own people, not hurt them, not harm them, not hunt them down on the streets of Portland or any other city. There was no protection built into this bill to stop a power-hungry president from misusing a powerful federal police force, hidden in disparate agencies, controlled by one agency head — the thought never even occurred to me.
No one in 2002 could have predicted Donald Trump’s 2016 election. What about the general possibility of presidential malfeasance or misconduct at some point in the future? Apparently that had “never even occurred” to the former senator, who now asserts, “When we write laws, we must think harder about how they might be misused.” Nine of her Senate colleagues thought things through. (The act passed 90-9, with one senator absent.)
I’m not an impartial critic of the decision to shove scores of agencies under an unwieldy DHS umbrella. I was with the senators (all Democrats, though not all liberals) who voted Nay. I even object to the authoritarian name of the agency. And, yes, Senator Boxer, it was a mistake to pass a bill with “no protection built into” it that places limits on presidential authority.
But the nation was still stunned by the 9-11 attacks, George W. Bush was basking in public approval, and it was easier to justify a Yea vote (and not think too hard about how the law might be misused), than a Nay.
But I don’t buy Boxer’s logic. She notes that Trump has “little regard for the letter of the law or executive restraint.” If we grant this, however, and we’ve been paying attention to Trump’s increasingly egregious conduct, and we’ve seen all his enablers, including Bill Barr (whom she doesn’t mention), doing Trump’s bidding — fussing over legislative detail, or even casting a no vote (in my view) doesn’t prevent Trump’s reckless, unconstitutional decision in 2020 to send federal agents in unmarked military uniforms to Portland to incite and assault Americans protesting in the streets.
Legislative protections only work when political actors accept democratic norms, respect Constitutional authority, and embrace the rule of law. We’ve left that station long ago.
▪ Democrats (including me) often decry the mindless partisanship of Republicans. But sometimes partisanship leads Democrats astray. The election of Alex Villanueva as Sheriff of solid blue Los Angeles County is a case in point (as I’ve related in a previous post).
Long story short: he ran as a Democrat for a nonpartisan office in a year (2018) when Democrats were focused on sending a message to Donald Trump. He defeated Sheriff Jim McDonnell, a former Republican (who had re-registered as an independent). Democratic clubs across the county and the county Democratic Party managed not to notice that Villanueva’s primary source of support was from a deputies’ union that opposed Sheriff McDonnell’s campaign to bring accountability to the agency and rid it of bad cops. (Don’t things look different from the perspective of 2020.) Nor were Democratic groups daunted by the absence of experienced leadership from Villanueva on any issues that Democrats ought to care about.
The new Sheriff has been wrangling with the County Board of Supervisors ever since taking office. The LA Times reports on the latest controversy this morning (“Sheriff’s sexist slur and accusations of ‘blood money’ ramp up feud with L.A. County supervisors”). In a dispute with board chair Hilda Solis he invoked La Malinche (“a name used to demean a woman as a traitor or sellout. It refers to a historical figure in Mexican culture who was the interpreter and slave of the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés and became a symbol of betrayal for facilitating the conquest of the Aztec empire”).
▪ Finally: Trader Joe’s (founded in Pasadena) made a corporate decision to abandon labeling such as Trader Ming’s, Trader Jose’s, and Trader Giotto’s [or seemed to do so; see Update below] after a 17-year old activist started an online petition that argued, “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures — it presents ‘Joe’ as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it.”
Readers of the LA Times weren’t convinced that TJ’s whimsical marketing was actually racist, as noted by four letters to the editor published earlier this month. Rather, the attitude across the board was, “Are you kidding me?”
On Saturday, Paul Thornton, the letters editor, commented (in introducing additional letters):
“The four letters published July 23 reflected that unanimity, and I thought that such a one-sided presentation of opinions would provoke at least a few readers who agreed with Trader Joe’s expression of cultural sensitivity to write us. Instead, the letters had the opposite effect….
This one (from an LA reader) was typical:
I am Chinese and a fifth-generation American. My father’s name was Ming, and he always got a chuckle out of seeing “Trader Ming” in the grocery store’s Fearless Flyer newsletter.
Kudos to the young woman who saw a problem and took action. However, I would like to respectfully suggest that there are many problems more worthy of her time and energy.
[Update: Trader Joe’s customers view the chain’s “brand variations” much as LA Times‘ readers do:
A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to “remove racist packaging from [our] products.” Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted us to take action. We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions.
We make decisions based on what customers purchase, as well as the feedback we receive from our customers and Crew Members. If we feel there is need for change, we do not hesitate to take action.
. . .
Recently we have heard from many customers reaffirming that these name variations are largely viewed in exactly the way they were intended—as an attempt to have fun with our product marketing. We continue our ongoing evaluation, and those products that resonate with our customers and sell well will remain on our shelves.]
(Image: Governor Gavin Newsom speaks in Stockton as seen on KTLA5.)