Morning Reads for Tuesday, January 5
It’s runoff day! Finally! We made it! If you are reading this site and haven’t voted yet, or aren’t sure where to vote, first please leave a note in the comments to let us know how you found this little corner of the #gapol-iverse. Then, get yourself to the My Voter Page so you can learn where you need to go vote in the Senate runoff, or to check the status of your (safe! secure!) absentee ballot.
I am writing this around 8 PM on Monday evening, but I am gonna go out on a limb and project two things:
- The Call is still the lead news story in the United States.
- The rally in Dalton was pretty much a regurgitation of most of the president’s rantings and soliloquies from The Call.
Meanwhile:
- So many rallies on Monday! Including one in Atlanta with President-Elect Biden, and another in Dalton with President Trump.
- U.S. Attorney and former State Representative BJ Pak abruptly resigned on Monday.
- Black voter engagement is critical to a win for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in today’s runoff.
- An excellent overview of why Georgia’s runoff elections are they way they are (as with so many of Georgia’s political quirks, it stems in part from the county unit system).
- How can we approach healthcare workers and assisted living staffers who are hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine?
- The stern of the Golden Ray was removed yesterday!
- For one shining moment this past weekend, #gapol Twitter was united in its support for UGA professor and living Georgia politics encyclopedia Charles Bullock after he received an egregiously low 1/10 rating from RoomRater.
About Author
Teri
Teri Anulewicz is a Democrat who represents House District 42 in the Georgia General Assembly. She previously spent nearly a decade on the Smyrna City Council. A native New Orleanian and quasi-Texan, Teri graduated from Agnes Scott College in 1998. She's been a front page contributor since 2015, and she compiles each Tuesday's Morning Reads.
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Well, Kemp is being his usual incompetent self. Anyone here get the vaccine yet?
“Elsewhere in Georgia, there are people who want to be vaccinated and can’t find out when and how they’ll get the shots. Meanwhile, some health care providers say they received hundreds more doses than they requested. Those issues are fueling anger and frustration about the state’s vaccination program, as Georgia continues to lag behind most states in the vaccination rate and as the toll from COVID-19 mounts. On Monday, Georgia for the first time surpassed 5,000 people currently hospitalized with the virus.
Adding to the confusion in Georgia is that the state has so many vaccination sites with so many different protocols and regimens, said Jimmy Lewis, chief executive officer of HomeTown Health, an advocacy group for rural hospitals in Georgia.
As it stands, he said, hospitals and healthcare agencies are hesitant to schedule inoculations because of uncertainties about the process. What if they receive 300 doses and 500 people show up? Do they turn them away? What if too many doses arrive and not enough people?
“If you’re going to vaccinate people, there has to be some predictability with what they have to do to get vaccinated,’’ Lewis said.
Updated numbers show that 94,607 Georgia residents now have been vaccinated.”
https://www.ajc.com/news/coronavirus/anger-frustration-growing-over-georgia-vaccination-efforts/UKIE3ZXQIZG53ADBJKN2GZEVU4/
What baffled me was the last press conference where the Commissioner of Public Health lamented how thousands of doses remained unused in storage, and stated how this was unacceptable. It sounded like she had no sense of control over the problem.
Election may be top story but this article contains a lot of info on Georgia’s ongoing unemployment program problems:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/04/unemployment-never-recevied/
What is clear: With a focus on preventing fraud, millions have languished without benefits. The current backlog on denials that need to have appeals and hearing now sits at no less than seven months. My potential ballparked rate of actual fraud: about one-half of one percent. (The articled states 30,000 apps flagged for potential fraud out of 4.1 M apps.)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The DoL had some technical problems with a new program and outdated systems, and that’s forgivable, but its biggest, most disappointing, most insulting, and most harmful problem this past year has been its culture, summed up as- Deny First.
Then, investigate later (If the applicant can whither the appeals system).
Thus, a huge backlog of appeals and months upon months of tens of thousands of people living in poverty. Better to grant benefits conditionally, and have supplementary adjudication afterwards.
I will say that other stories I have heard recently have initial apps being process more quickly. But the damage has been done. The culture was skewed towards denial and infliction of harm. There needs to be a major overhaul of the department.
I’m glad you shared this link. Before my inbox was full of kraken emails, it was full of emails from constituents who were dealing with major delays with their UI because of this deny-first culture, coupled with an absolute lack of manpower at the DOL. I anticipate we’ll hear a lot more about this when Session starts on Monday.
Any plans to run for state office in 2022? It might be a good idea.
I appreciate the thought, and while the thought has been there on occasion, I also despise the current state of elections culture, so…
Now even the likes of Dick Cheney and Fox News are agreeing that President Trump is destroying the Republican Party brand. I’m still wondering if “The Call” has tilted the scales for Warnock and Ossoff in today’s election:
Trump’s damaging Georgia call isn’t media unfairness—it’s his own words
…Raffensperger, who stood his ground, has said he leaked the tape of the call only after Trump mischaracterized their conversation in a Sunday tweet: “He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
On “Fox & Friends” yesterday, Steve Doocy said of the call: “So far we haven’t seen the evidence.” The conservative editorial pages of the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, like Fox owned by Rupert Murdoch, have demanded that Trump drop his fraud claims and concede the election. And in a Washington Post op-ed, the 10 living former defense secretaries – including Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and ex-Trump appointees Jim Mattis and Mark Esper – say “the time for questioning the results has passed.”
Yet on this very day that Georgia goes to the polls to determine whether the National scene becomes a Democratic party sweep we find Republican congressmen and senators further destroying their own and their party’s credibility in support of this megalomaniac. Senator Perdue chose to criticize the SoS for proving the President lied. Senator Loeffler chose to fly in on Marine 1 with the President last night to again hear him repeat his delusions. I know Clint Eastwood’s character William Munny famously said: “Deserve’s ain’t got nothing to do with it.” But in this case, if they lose today’s election they and the Georgia Republican Party DO deserve it.
Oops:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trumps-damaging-georgia-call-isnt-media-unfairness-its-his-own-words
“Georgia elections official says voter turnout across the state appears light so far”
With the lead in absentee ballot from the blue counties, the Trump/election conspiracies may be really helping. Now that would be ironic.
Trump tweet:
“Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
11:06 AM · Jan 5, 2021
Wrong old man, you have no power left.
Oh if we win, I am going to drink the salty tears!
Must be a bug in y’alls software. President Felony was caught committing another election crime right here in your own backyard & not a peep from our hosts. Hell, Pelosi’s refrigerator gets 300 words before breakfast.
It makes Republicans uncomfortable and it was reported very widely already. Several posts yesterday on it.
Did you hear Trump’s lawyer on the call, Cleta Mitchell, got fired by her firm today. They had agreed not to work on election fraud cases and she snuck behind their back. Being around Trump is very toxic, we need to bury him in a salt mine somewhere to protect others.
Most disturbing to me is the tidbit I read that, if memory serves, that 4 out of 5 Republicans believe the election was not legit on some level. If that’s the case, it puts media publishers in essentially the same scenario as politicians- very wary of losing readership/the base. However, the very fact that it is 4 out of 5, I believe, is partially the result of fish-eyed media perspectives. Or media bubbles if you prefer. And part of that is the delivery; i.e. I think people believe that the outraged or indignant delivery of opinion must be truth, because who would or could feign such outrage? More, that indignation is an emotion they already feel with regard to government. Thus, moderation and rationality can be less persuasive for many. The struggle between the heart and mind remains real. I believe media needs to focus more on the mind, take the tone of educators, and “teach up” readers, all while paying due attention to emotional concerns.
PBS News Hour may “teach up” but the others are going for viewers to get good Neilson ratings.
I just tell the Republicans I know to just skip the election since their vote doesn’t count. They don’t buy it and vote anyway.