Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

A Brief Rant About the Logic of Borders

Here’s a headline from Bloomberg News: “Rhode Island Police to Hunt Down New Yorkers Seeking Refuge” (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/rhode-island-police-to-hunt-down-new-yorkers-seeking-refuge)

This is where we are at today, as the virus count increases geometrically. We have state governments attempting to shut their borders to people from other states — Rhode Island and Florida will not be the last to do this.

This virus is real. The impacts are real. But this is the kind of thing that happens when there is no federal leadership and when we have a president whose prescription for all ills is to close our national borders rather than to address the infections that are killing us from the inside.

Immigration? Shut the borders and, for god’s sake, don’t address the reason that millions around the globe have been forced to flee their homes — kleptocracy and corruption, climate, war, violence, broken economies, etc.

Terrorism? Shut the borders and, for god’s sake, don’t address the root causes of terrorism, which are similar to those driving the refugee crisis — corruption and a sense of lost power.

COVID-19? Shut the borders to China. Then Europe. And now, the state’s are closing their borders to other states, attempting to restrict the movement of Americans within their own country, as if the virus respects borders, as if the virus can be contained without an aggressive and unified response.

We need federal leadership. We need to nationalize the manufacture of ventilators (Trump final ordered GM to manufacture them under the Defense Protection Act, though other companies need to be doing the same). We need the manufacture of tests, research into drugs, a moratorium on mortgage and rent, on insurance payments, utility payments at a national level, which in turn would allow people to stay home without as much worry about their finances.

The governors of Rhode Island and Florida are doing what they think will protect their residents and, while I think their approaches are problematic, I can’t blame them.

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo Photographer: Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images (via Bloomberg)

The Struggle Worsens for those who Struggle in Normal Times

We watch the news: Job losses. Ventilator shortages. Drive-through testing sites at capacity. New York is running out of hospital beds. This is what why public health officials say we need to flatten the curve — to slow the spread of the coronavirus and allow us to provide healthcare without being overwhelmed, which is likely to lead to shortages and rationing. It’s what we’ve witnessed in Italy, and we would be foolish to assume that it can’t happen here.

But we’re healthy. We’re stocked up, prepared for the most part. This is not the case for all. The Times today reports on what it calls the “most vulnerable,” those in refugee camps who have fled war and famine and are packed into camps that lack even the most basic sanitary conditions. “(I)nternational health experts and aid workers,” the Times reports, “are increasingly worried that the virus could ravage the world’s most vulnerable people: the tens of millions forced from their homes by violent conflict.”

Read the full story here.

Social Darwinism Rears Its Ugly Head

Trump & Co. Look to the Cost-Benefit Analysis to Justify Leaving the Vulnerable to Battle COVID-19 on Their Own

Donald Trump, much of the right, many on Wall Street, and centrists like Thomas L. Friedman are ready for the economy to “return to normal” (whatever that means) at the cost of an untold number of lives.

The New York Times this morning wrote that this group has begun “questioning whether the government had gone too far and should instead lift restrictions that are already inflicting deep pain on workers and businesses.” This is despite a consensus among health officials and scientists that “the best way to defeat the virus is to order nonessential businesses to close and residents to confine themselves at home.”

The argument being made by these folks, bluntly, is that the costs to the economy outweigh the benefits of saving lives.

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” Trump said during his briefing yesterday, and while he did not say it specifically, it is clear that he has started applying a cost-benefit analysis that privileges capital and the stock market over the lives of Americans, especially those who are most vulnerable.

Read the full essay here.