Politics

After five days of deliberation spanning the Christmas holiday, a federal jury in the Southern District of New York today found Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell guilty of five of six counts of human trafficking for her actions over ten years in multiple US states.

We’ve all learnt to wash our hands more carefully over the last couple of years, but no one has soaped his dirty digits as fastidiously as Joe Biden. His announcement that “there is no federal solution” to Covid-19 puts him up there with history’s greatest handwashers. Like Pontius Pilate, Biden is leaving it to the mob: “this gets solved at the state level.” Unlike the procrastinating procurator who surrendered his responsibilities to the jeering Judeans, Biden’s got it right. But it won’t save him from the jeers — and nor should it. Biden won the presidency on a promise of the federal solution that he now says doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist in 2020, either.

After months of yelling about how important at-home testing kits are, Joe Biden forgot to buy them. Oops! In his address on Tuesday, the president told Americans, “We also need to do better with at-home testing. So, I’m announcing today: the federal government will purchase one half billion — that’s not million; billion with a 'B' — additional at-home rapid tests, with deliveries starting in January.” But according to the New York Times, the half billion with a “B” tests are some ways out: “Mr. Biden’s administration has not yet signed a contract to buy the tests, and the website to order them will not be up until January.” The president’s potential successor Pete Buttigieg once wisely said that there are two kinds of Christmas shoppers.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been quoted as saying her media coverage would be better if she were a white man. She is absolutely right. She wouldn’t have bad coverage. She wouldn’t have any coverage at all. That’s because she would still be a minor senator from a big state, not the second-highest official in the Executive Branch. She was selected only because she has the identity-politics markers so important to Democrats. It should be obvious by now that Harris is a terrible politician. When friendly reporters toss her softballs, she swings, misses and blames them. When she is given hard policy assignments, she swings and misses those, too. (In her defense, her main assignment, immigration, is President Biden’s failure, not her’s.

So, you got a cold. It happens around this time every year, to almost everyone. You got the sniffles, your head is a little foggy, you have an occasional sneeze, there’s some persistent phlegm lingering in the back of your throat. It’s mildly annoying, and you’re reminded this is bound to happen at least once every winter, and life goes on as normal but with a few more tissues in your pocket. Give it three days, a week max. Maybe you take some over-the-counter medicine, have chicken soup for lunch, sleep next to a humidifier. Upon greeting friends or coworkers, you politely decline a handshake or hug. “Sorry, I’ve got a cold,” you tell them — and they appreciate your consideration. “Oh, I just got over that,” one might say, “something’s going around.

A crime wave haunts blue-state America, and nowhere more so than in super-blue California. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore is trying to assure residents and tourists that violent crime is not out of control, which is not at all reassuring. Police departments statewide are stressed, and finding able recruits is a struggle. Faced with surging gun violence and a dwindling number of police officers, Oakland has proposed $50,000 signing bonuses to veteran cops. Since 2014, California voters have unshackled a fast-expanding criminal class that rolls expertly with the dice. Starting with Proposition 47, the state penal code has reduced many felonies to misdemeanors. Shoplifting and petty theft have been effectively decriminalized. Serious crimes go unprosecuted.

BBB, RIP The end is never pretty. But Senator Joe Manchin put Biden’s Build Back Better legislation out of its misery with striking efficiency on Sunday morning, delivering a decisive “no” not behind closed doors with an apologetic pat on the other Joe’s back, but live on national television. Democrats are working their way through the first two stages of grief: denial and anger. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki provided both in spades in a response to Manchin yesterday.

Joe Manchin was never going to vote for Build Back Better. Now that he's declared himself a "no" and all but killed President Biden's titanic spending package, it's time for Democrats to admit as much. To be sure, Manchin has played well the role of centrist negotiator. He's furrowed his brow and raised pragmatic concerns over renewable energy and inflation. He's huddled with his fellow Joe at the White House and won plenty of concessions. He's provided chum for bored (and boring) political analysts, as analyzing him and his fellow holdout Kyrsten Sinema became a kind of Kremlinology for the Twitter-addicted. But such breathless parsing forgets one simple fact: all politics is local.

Language about insulin is supposed to be one of the bigger selling points of the Build Back Better Act. Democrats say prices would be capped at $35, which is true from a certain point of view. Insulin co-pay prices get capped at $35 — starting in 2023 — for Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage plans. Individual and private insurers face different rules, however, only having to charge $35 for either a vial or a pen. They can also pick one kind of insulin to cover. Insulin price controls are a hot topic right now for good reason. Over the last twenty-three years, Humalog brand insulin has gone from $21 a vial to $275. The generic version of insulin called Semglee costs almost the same.