New York’s Governor Cuomo is doing a decent job with the coronavirus crisis. However –
I hate fusion too, but – what the new measures mean (if they stand up in court after the next round of lawsuits that our small third party must now divert precious resources to) is that only three parties will have a line on any ballot in the state of New York: Democrats, Republicans and Conservatives. There will no longer be a Green Party line, or a Libertarian line, nor will the Independence Party or the newly-created Serve America Movement Party have a line on the ballot, in any race, anywhere in the state. Our state will have either the most restrictive ballot access or the second most restrictive, depending on which source you want to believe – and all because our governor put into his budget measures that were just struck down by the courts. That sucks, and he sucks for doing it.
The governor of Kansas should be more flexible seeing the state has 105 counties and western Kansas is basically virus free so she should allow more local discretion.
I don’t disagree, but his tactic is killing the Green Party too. We don’t cross-endorse. we run our own candidates.
He coud have just killed “fusion”. Instead he went for a measure that wipes out all 3rd party parties in NY state. And he’s inserting it as a small part of an emergency measure. Hardly a democratic action.
a) About 2/3 of the counties in Kansas have at least one confirmed COVID-19 case.
b) Of the remaining 1/3, exactly one county isn’t adjacent to a county with COVID-19 cases.
c) Look at southwest Kansas. Ford County (Dodge City) has 127 cases. Finney County (Garden City) has 35 cases. Seward County (Liberal) has 47 cases. And these three counties aren’t adjacent to one another; they’re three different clusters. By the time you include the counties adjacent to those 3 counties, you’re looking at most of the SW corner of the state that really should be under restrictions.
d) So maybe you could say, a dozen or so counties in the NW corner of Kansas should be treated differently.
e) Or maybe the people there should thank their lucky stars that the spread of the virus there is being arrested before it took off in the first place. Like pretty much everyone has been saying, if the health officials did their job, it’ll seem like overreacting.
Phil Scott (R-VT), the only Republican I consistently vote for, has done an excellent job in my opinion. Nipped it right in the bud. People here are careful and vigilant, but not paranoid. If anything this whole crisis has brought about a sense of community and togetherness where I live.
I agree that Arizona Gov Ducey is doing alright. Not great, but not terrible. ANd I generally don’t have very high expectations of him, so he’s doing better than I thought.
I’m with you on that! I’ve been watching DeWine and Acton every day. You can tell he’s deferring to her expertise and letting her lead, and I commend DeWine for that (he’s still horrible on his abortion stance, although Acton seems very opposite so maybe in the future he’ll defer to her expertise there too?)
One thing that I feel very weird about appreciating about DeWine is that he IS a Republican and he has not been speaking against Trump at all. I heard him praise Trump early on, in a way that made me very uncomfortable. But it turns out that kissing Dear Leader’s ass is going to help keep our medical personnel and residents safe, so I appreciate DeWine’s Repblicanism on that front.
The same Green Party that played such a big part in swinging the 2000 and 2016 elections? I fail to have much sympathy. The whole third party in New York only made sense when that state had, for historical reasons, a lot of non-Democratic liberals. That doesn’t exist anymore, and the other 49 states lived perfectly fine without it.
Back to the subject, Inslee has done a terrific job here in Washington. He was one of the first to put up restrictions, and when lots of people the first weekend of restrictions crowded bars and restaurants, he put down the hammer and closed the schools and eateries right away. A lot of people thought at the time it was overkill at the time but he’s been proved right. That’s why, even though we were the first state to have deaths, our death rate is actually lower than the national average.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico is doing everything right, as far as I can tell. Most importantly, she closed the schools before the virus got any sort of foothold in the community. There has been no waffling or mincing of words, and her example has most of the community taking things seriously. Due to a couple of national labs, and low population otherwise, science gets a lot of respect in NM. I really haven’t seen ANY politicization coming from the governors office.
The state has the advantages of low population density, low humidity, and lots of sunshine (which reduce the viability time of the virus) but also has some control cases of Native American Pueblos and reservations which have a degree of sovereignty and some of these are seeing huge outbreaks (on a per-capita basis). This suggests that the Governor’s measures have made a serious dent in the number of cases.
The bulk of the cases are still in Albuquerque and Santa Fe area counties, but that is where the bulk of the population is…on a per-capita basis, these counties are down around 10th place.
I work at the largest hospital in the state, and we have (so far…touch wood) been prepared for a significantly larger number of cases than are showing up. Due to postponement of anything elective, reduced traffic (fewer accidents) closed bars (fewer fights) etc. etc. the emergency department is VERY slow lately. Doctors are minimizing admissions, and accelerating discharges, so most of the hospital is slower than usual, and with very stringent limitations on visitors, it seems even emptier.
They erected a tent outside the main entrance to do preliminary screenings, but after a couple of days operation, it is now on standby…ready to go if things get much worse.
California Governor Gavin Newsom just announced [address on youtube] that they’re doing a partnership with FEMA and local restaurants to deliver food to the elderly. They’re allowing $60 a day for 3 meals to be delivered to seniors’ homes. The government will pay the local restaurants for the food and the delivery so that helps the local restaurants. And the restaurants will pay sales tax, so that helps the State government in return.
The State is also investing in wellness checks and call lines. I like that the State is trying to protect the elderly. That’s something that seemed to be lacking in a lot of the country plans where a lot of seniors died.
I think his ideas about this issue are pretty innovative, and I hope they work. Separately, I think that he ran on universal health care, and I hope he gets somewhere with it because that’s something that could help with this crisis also.