Thursday, April 9, 2020

NYC Educator: Land of the Free

NYC Educator: Land of the Free

Land of the Free


I've never seen our country quite in the condition it's in. How can it be, in the richest country in the world, that we have no masks for doctors and nurses? How can it be that hospitals are dressing employees in plastic bags because they haven't got protective gowns?

How can it be that we have a President hyping unproven treatments in which he owns stock? How, after all this time, can COVID testing be inaccessible to so many? With such scarce testing, how can we determine with any accuracy how deadly this pandemic is? I spoke to someone yesterday whose significant other had tested positive, yet she and her children were not sure they could get tested.

This is not the country I learned about when I was a kid. In fact, it seems more like a third world banana republic of sorts. I thought that when GW Bush became President based on Daddy's court and little brother's state. Lately, though, that seems like a quaint memory.

I didn't think we'd see a worse president than GW, but now we have one. He's managed to make our reptilian governor look like a hero. Andrew Cuomo may be cutting Medicaid in the midst of a pandemic, and he may refuse to make his well-heeled BFFs pay additional taxes, but he's a grownup who's not insane. You can't say that about the juvenile narcissist in the White House.

And take a look at what's going on elsewhere, In Wisconsin, they had a primary on Tuesday. One of the republican legislators who pushed this through got dressed up in a mask and gown, announcing it was perfectly safe for all the residents who lacked access to the protective gear. You wouldn't see this in a science fiction film because fiction needs to be believable. The hypocrisy was simply mind-blowing.

And the results on the ground were incredible. Milwaukee, which contains a large population of people of color, had five polling places for the entire city. Two years ago, there were 200. People waited up to five hours in the hail to vote. Only 3% of eligible voters showed up, a 90% drop. Why? Because the deciding vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was CONTINUE READING: 
NYC Educator: Land of the Free