My Blog Week: March 29 to April 4

A Word on the Week

A Devil’s Dilemma 

This, we assume, is the interior struggle torturing Mitch McConnell and company. It gives them pains to think of the poor getting stimulus money. But then again, the poor are the only ones likely to have no bank accounts. Only people with no bank accounts, confronted with a check in the mail, are likely to patronize the check-cashing industry’s services. Checks to the poor would be a big bonanza in fees for some reliable Trump supporters, i.e. the payday loan people.

But, if only those the Republicans think of as “good people” can get a boost (though apparently even for the sterling it may take a while), they’ll just have the funds direct-deposited.

We read the administration is thinking of an FDR-like jobs program. What are the odds this will be a voucher for a tuition discount at an online, for-profit school (as the Secretary of Education prefers), made good as soon as the student qualifies for a loan?

It might be nice if people would stop blithely recommending you use things you don’t have… I suppose we can all fashion some sort of mask (never mind giving up toilet paper for bidets); but what if, in addition to checks, our government were to send each American a mask to wear?

(You laugh at this vision of efficiency, no doubt.)

Now consider this: If I am staying at home, and I can account for every contact I’ve had, the grocery store, the pharmacy, two packages delivered, daily mail, nothing more—then if I happen to test positive for coronavirus, the possibilities of where I picked it up are so limited, the source has a good shot at being traced. To prevent further infections. Suppose I live where beaches have been kept open, and I’ve gone down hobnobbing among the shops and restaurants and have probably been in contact directly and indirectly with two hundred people. If I get coronavirus, that datum is pretty much useless. If we don’t limit our contacts to workable numbers, our suffering has no role to play in resolving patterns of this disease’s spread. Another good reason state leaders should conduct themselves helpfully.