Berger-Hall to Josh Stein: "Pound Sand"

 

Photo Galen Bacharier, NC Newsline

Reportedly, in its last enacted budget Republican state lawmakers shorted the Medicaid program by around $319 million for the current fiscal year. As a result, Josh Stein's Health and Human Services (HHS) has resorted to cutting Medicaid reimbursements 3% to most hospitals and clinics (and up to 10-12% to "specialty providers"). Primary care doctors, dentists, community care clinics, nursing homes are all dependent on Medicaid funding. 

On Nov. 6, Governor Stein called a special session of the General Assembly for Nov. 17 to deal with that funding crisis. The state constitution gives the governor the power to summon lawmakers back to Raleigh to deal with emergencies (and you see where parsing that word will end up in court, right?). At a news conference, Stein said legislators had “failed North Carolina and the people of North Carolina” by not addressing the Medicaid shortfall during their October session -- which was largely devoted to once again redrawing the state’s congressional districts to add an extra Republican to Trump's tote board.

Yesterday, in a joint letter to Stein, House Speaker Destin Hall and Senate boss Phil Berger said they would not convene a session on Nov. 17, and claimed that Stein’s call for a special session "is constitutionally invalid and politically motivated."

Politically motivated. I certainly hope so!

Both chambers of the General Assembly are controlled completely by the GOP. Same party, but two equally immovable factions, fighting over the lucre. Leaders in both chambers have acknowledged the underfunding of Medicaid, and both chambers have written their own budget solutions in separate versions of a bill that was supposed to be blended and amended into a single unified budget law months ago. That didn't happen. There is no budget. North Carolina is now alone among all the fifty other states in the absence of one.

Berger-Hall

Can Berger-Hall just refuse to convene? You know it'll be litigated, and it'll be nobody's surprise when the current NC Supreme Court under Chief Justice Paul Newby rules for the General Assembly. Newby's going to love Berger-Hall's argument that Governor Stein's HHS made premature cuts to reimbursements as a means of exerting political pressure on the General Assembly. 

Josh Stein fired back at Berger-Hall: "The Republican majority has made the time to damage our democracy with their gerrymander. But when it comes time to protect people’s health care? When it comes time to enact a comprehensive budget? They’re on vacation, and they’ll see us next year. All while North Carolina families pay the price."

As far as I'm concerned, of course it's political, and it gives Stein the upper-hand here, the high ground, the advantage, because he is taking extraordinary action to stave off major damage to health care in North Carolina, while Berger-Hall just look like jerks, self-serving and out of touch with reality. So rather than asking, "Can they do that-- just refuse to come when summoned?" I should be asking the other question, "Why would they want to do that?" Because refusing to deal with the shortage of money that goes to help a whole community of need just helps build the bad, bad Republican brand of failing its own struggling MAGA base. 

Bernie Is Burning It Up in North Carolina Today

 

Last night in Wheeling, W.Va. Bernie speaking on his "Fight Oligarchy" Tour

Bernie Sanders is holding rallies today in Greensboro and Asheville as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.  He's focusing on how the Medicaid cuts in the "Big Beautiful Bill" will impact rural hospitals and working-class families. You know who else agrees that a medical crisis is ahead? Sen. Thom Tillis, who voted against Trump’s BBFU because "it will end Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians" and “tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”

I'm obliged to remind everyone that in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primary on March 3rd, Bernie Sanders got over 69% of the vote in Watauga County, to Hillary Clinton's 29%. There are 20 voting precincts in Watauga County. Bernie Sanders carried every single one of them, from the most rural and conservative to the Boone and Blowing Rock precincts. 

Tell me he doesn't still speak for a very large segment of the voting population.

This is what resistance looks like.

FOOTNOTE

Should have included this: The Asheville rally is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sunday at the Harrah's Cherokee Center.

The Confounding Stupidity of Trump 2.0

 

Duke University, Durham, NC:

Laurie H. Sanders, PhD, associate professor in neurology and pathology, conducts research on Parkinson’s disease. Her lab has developed a method, based on mitochondrial DNA damage, that can detect Parkinson’s disease in its early stages with a simple blood test. Her research has the potential not only to enable early diagnosis and intervention before significant neurological damage occurs, but also to help identify therapeutic targets to reverse or halt damaged mitochondrial DNA and the disease process.  

The Sanders test can distinguish people with Parkinson's from people without it, but there's much more to understand before clinical trials, like how the "biomarkers" change with aging. Said Sanders, "And we want to understand what’s driving DNA damage in the first place, because then we might be able to target that process with new therapeutics." (Duke Univ. School of Medicine)  

Sanders’ research break-through came about supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her laboratory staff includes one postdoctoral scholar, three graduate students, three visiting scholars, three technicians, and 13 undergraduates. On February 7, 2025, Trump's new hit-men at NIH announced a cap of 15% on reimbursement of Facilities & Administration (F&A) research grant costs, which cover equipment and facilities, maintenance and compliance, data processing, and many other essential needs that make research possible. 

"The proposed cap could mean an estimated loss of almost $200 million annually in research funding at Duke alone and significantly hinder or halt scientific and biomedical research in many critical areas." Trump 2.0 threatens to extinguish a whole generation of rising scientists, like the assistants in Sanders' lab, let alone put a damper on the advancement of basic science. (The funding-cap order from NIH is currently on judicial hold, with the future very cloudy.)

Dr. Sanders' current grant ends in August. She said, "I’ve submitted a grant proposal to continue our work, but right now [NIH] is not even reviewing grants, much less approving them."

The MAGA crowd who chortle at any pain felt by egg-heads might want to consider how your laughter sounds to the millions who could be saved by Dr. Sanders' breakthrough. My own mother was diagnosed in her 60s with Parkinson's, and the spiraling deterioration took us all down, especially my father. "We do this because there are real people living with the disease right now,” said Dr. Sanders. "Our work is always with an eye toward translation [into practical tests] and ultimately to benefit patients."

What Trump/Musk Is Doing to Medical Science

 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) constitute 27 different research centers, "each with a specific research agenda, often focusing on particular diseases or body systems" (NIH website) -- in toto, a biomedical research enterprise staffed by about 6,200 scientists, steering an enormous grant-making machine that distributes most of its budget across the country to support researchers at 2,500 institutions. For example, National Cancer Institute, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, etc. -- they all funnel money to research scientists, including doctors who work at university hospital complexes in this state.

“The biomedical research enterprise in the United States depends largely on NIH dollars," said senior investigator and chief of the laboratory of molecular immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "You take the dollars away, the labs go away, and you lose the next generation of scientists.”

So first, Trump bypasses the most qualified senior scientist Lawrence Tabak for the directorship, a highly regarded administrator who had actually been acting director previously, and puts in a lower level scientist whose main qualification appears to be that he once disagreed with Anthony Fauci about who should be included in covid vaccination mandates. Playing to his stupid base, who've been brainwashed to think that Fauci is the cause of all evils. So the new director, Matthew Memoli, a longtime NIH influenza researcher and physician who was not part of the senior leadership ranks, is trying his best to keep up with all of Trump's whims and wild hairs.

But then came a hiring freeze, a travel ban, a communications pause and cancellations of routine grant-review meetings. Scientists were even told they could not purchase the basic lab supplies needed to keep experiments going. [And] Lawrence Tabak found himself shut out of meetings with leadership....

Trump’s executive orders to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives .... was a shock to the nation’s scientists, who work in laboratories that have been largely insulated from election cycles and the shifting political agendas of Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

[Then came] a jaw-dropping memo from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget that called for a pause on federal grant activity — one of NIH’s main reasons to exist. This order seemed to encompass most activities that spread NIH grants across the country, including making research awards, evaluating the most meritorious scientific proposals and even just continuing the funding of existing projects that needed renewal.

[By the end of week 2 of Trump 2.0] a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge in Rhode Island said funding should be unfrozen....

Then came the biggest blow yet: ... Health and Human Services (HHS) declared that henceforth NIH would cap at 15 percent the indirect cost rates, or “overhead,” in funding it sends to research institutions....

On Feb. 10, a federal judge ... said the federal government must comply with a 10-day-old restraining order. “The defendants must resume the funding of institutes and other agencies of the defendants (for example the National Institute for Health),” wrote U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island. The cap of 15 percent on indirect costs was temporarily halted by a court as well.

At midday on Feb. 11, Tabak was summoned to the downtown offices of HHS. The meeting turned out to be an ambush, according to multiple people familiar with what transpired. As it wrapped up, Tabak was handed a memo that said he was no longer the top deputy at NIH. Instead, he would be a senior adviser to the acting HHS secretary, Dorothy Fink — working in downtown Washington, far from NIH, far from his own laboratory. That evening, Tabak sent an email to colleagues saying he was retiring immediately, after 25 years of government service. (WashPost)

So it goes in Trump 2.0, a regime that hates science.

 

 

Stupidity!

 

MUMPS (the "Musk-Trump Syndicate" -- that's what Thomas Mills calls the junta currently wrecking the furniture and derailing actual human lives) caused the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to abruptly withdraw financial support for testing in clinical trials (in Africa among other places) of new health-care devices and medicines. MUMPS issued a stop-work order to all organizations around the globe that receive its money. ("The abrupt move followed an executive order by President Trump freezing all foreign aid for at least 90 days. Since then, the Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the agency entirely.") (NYTimes)

The Times focused some reporting on just a few of the persons impacted negatively by this stupidity. Like the 22-year-old woman in South Africa who was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection -- a device that was surgically inserted into her vagina which required constant monitoring.

In interviews with Times reporters, scientists — "who are forbidden by the terms of the stop-work order to speak with the news media — described agonizing choices: violate the stop-work orders and continue to care for trial volunteers, or leave them alone to face potential side effects and harm."

Not just stupid, but cruel too, and totally irresponsible with other people's lives and health.

The United States is signatory to the Declaration of Helsinki that lays out ethical principles under which medical research must be conducted, requiring that researchers care for participants throughout a trial, and report the results of their findings to the communities where trials were conducted.

The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers, including trials of:

malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique
treatment for cholera in Bangladesh
a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi
tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa
nutritional support for children in Ethiopia
early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia
ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan
an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa

It's staggering, the Devil-may-care-but-I-don't inhumanity of Musk and his facilitator, Jethro -- it's unethical, it's immoral, it's dishonorable, it's un-American. It involves and implicates ALL OF US as voting citizens of this Republic.

Speaker Johnson Steps On His Johnson: "We're Gonna Take Away the Healthcare of Millions"

 

The Guardian,Wed 30 Oct 2024 09.40 EDT:

Vice-President Kamala Harris may have received another last-minute helping hand from Republicans after the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said there would be “massive” healthcare changes if Donald Trump wins next Tuesday, including abolishing Obamacare.

"Here's How We Deliver for the Gambling Industry: We Get the Democrats To Pass It!"

 

Jason Saine

Because Berger can't get casino gambling past the Republicans in the NC House, the NC House leaders -- mainly Jason Saine, as the chief budget writer, who is also a loyal lieutenant to Tim Moore -- put forth a new "compromise" that ties the passage of casino gambling to the long-promised implementation of Medicaid expansion to hundreds of thousands, in a blatant attempt to seduce enough Democrats into voting for the gambling industry, since rank and file Republicans won't. (This is the only hard news source I've seen about this rogue and naked maneuver, and the article focuses more on Gov. Cooper's denouncement of the thing than the thing itself. Cooper called the bill "a brutally dishonest backroom deal.")

The casino plan and Medicaid expansion would then be in one bill together, separate from the actual budget, a source from both parties told CBS 17....

So far, Democrats have not received many details about the plan. The details they have seen were described as “garbled” by one Democrat who spoke to CBS 17 Saturday.

Rep. Jason Saine (R-Lincoln) who is a top budget writer in the House confirmed the proposal, rumors of which began Friday night. Saine also said votes for the budget and the combined Medicaid/casino bill would take place on Wednesday and Thursday.

So stand by for a coliseum spectacle if Democrats jump on board enough to give Phil Berger his wet dream.

Virginia Foxx Votes To Clamp Down on Medical Corporation Billing Practices

 

Virginia Foxx chaired the markup session for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on four bipartisan bills that appear to clamp down on hospital corporations for "dishonest billing, opaque rules, and shady industry practices that have left patients paying higher costs for health care" (Foxx said in an opening statement). And she added this: "Today's passage of our bipartisan health care package makes great strides towards giving clarity to patients and building a health care system that is more transparent, affordable, and accessible." 

Those four bills easily passed the committee and now head to the full House floor.

A soft spot in her heart for her suffering constituents is sometimes no match for the soft spot in her heart for corporations with power. So this seems notable.

Watauga Seniors Strike Back at ARHS

 

Last night at the regular bi-monthly meeting of the Watauga County Commission, the place was packed (SRO), mainly by senior citizens outraged that the Appalachian Regional Healthcare System (ARHS) had announced in an email on April 3 (from sender marketing@apprhs.org) that the Broyhill Wellness Center in Boone will be closing on May 31. About 20 paying members and instructors at the Center spoke out at the beginning of the meeting, a sharp departure from the usual order of things.

(Public comment's moving to the start of the meeting was fortuitous. Public comment has always been pushed to the last item on the agenda in Watauga, after all votes have been taken, but at the last Commish meeting on April 4, a large group of mainly young people had spoken out against the practice and requested that the commissioners move public comment to the front end, before official votes. Not only did the commissioners agree to that last night, but Chair Larry Turnbow moved to begin the new order of things at once.)

The first speaker emphasized that he and the others appearing before the Commish knew that the county did not own or control the ARHS, but perhaps there was some moral suasion (jaw-boning, I thought) that the County could wield with the ARHS management to reverse the decision. (NOTE: I've just seen the closure announcement that went to -- I guess? -- paying members. It contained a little strategic finger-pointing, subtle but implied, that the County's new center, a couple of blocks away from the Wellness Center, had become a competitor, which along with COVID, had negatively impacted their memberships and hence their revenue (they didn't say that last part about revenue). Not enough money from coaching retirees to be more active? And here I thought that old age in America had been thoroughly commodified and monetized.

The speakers last night were unanimous that the new recreation center is not elder-friendly, and not equipped in layout or equipment anyhow to take the place of the Wellness Center. And what about all the wonderful instructors hired and paid by the Wellness Center? The instructors, some of whom attended last night, received high praise for creating community as well as promoting active health? They're paid $18.00 an hour (one speaker said), and they'll be losing their jobs. Another speaker suggested that the County hire all of them to move their classes to the county's recreation center, a cheery thought and probably a non-starter. 

The bottomline implication is that the County has an actual obligation to do something material -- either some stern talk to put pressure on the ARHS management to reverse a decision that seems whimsical and callous, or making the new recreation center more accessible/usable for the displaced Wellness Center seniors. One speaker did point out that not many years ago Watauga County did own the hospital and could control -- or at least influence -- its direction and its priorities, and that something bad had happened to healthcare in the interim when the county lost control -- or gave it away. 

ARHS removed the lap pool from the Wellness Center in 2021, citing as a reason the county's large new pool at the new recreation center, a competitor, and the ARHS concluded, an unnecessary duplication of available amenities (that is, fiscally unjustifiable). 

I've searched for any company announcement or press release from ARHS about the closing. I've searched the ARHS website, and I find nothing. I've searched the ARHS Facebook page, where there was nary a peep -- going back to March -- that a big change was coming. I've searched the local press, which has been totally silent and/or oblivious to the closure (unless I missed it, which is always possible). It's almost like closing the Wellness Center became a secret, or maybe a live grenade that everyone is tiptoeing around. On the Broyhill Wellness Center webpage, all the regular membership information, etc. is still very much up, with no indication that they may soon be kaput. One speaker last night mentioned the some 1,200 families that are directly impacted. (Membership is that large?) That's news worth reporting.

The ARHS is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit that brought in right at $30 million in revenue in 2020 (as reported on Nonprofit Explorer). Although "nonprofit" is part of their identity, so is the need to meet large expenses (which for ARHS includes at least a couple of top executives making over $1 mil a year).

Following some 20 speakers who were begging the Commish to do something to help save what has been a net asset for good health in Watauga County, as hundreds of elders struggle to stay active, Chairman Turnbow made the motion to instruct the Commish's rep on the ARHS Board, Commissioner Ray Russell, to convey the distress of the community to the top bosses.

The Petition

An on-line petition about the Wellness Center's closing is gathering signatures:  

After 25 years, administrators at Appalachian Regional Healthcare System have decided (without consulting the members of the community it serves) that these true preventive services are no longer compatible with the "clinical mission" of the organization. The administrators found prevention to be innovative in 1998, but "orthopedic and sports medicine care, physical therapy and rehabilitation and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation" are deemed more innovative in 2023.

The administrators have suggested to our community that the Watauga County Community Recreation Center is where Wellness Center members should go after May 31, 2023. The Rec Center is a great facility, as is the Wellness Center. They both serve a purpose and both have unique constituencies. The assumption that the two facilities are homogeneous and that the Rec Center can easily absorb the functions of the Wellness Center is completely unfounded.

The Community of Wellness Center users respectfully request that the ARHS administrators reassess this ill-considered decision. At the very least, involve the people that are affected by the proposed closure and try to come up with a plan that might meet the needs of all concerned.

How the NC GOP REALLY Treats Rural North Carolina

 

Thomas Mills very recently wrote a sharp column that began, 

Dear Rural and Small Town North Carolinians,

We need to talk. You’ve been voting for Republicans steadily for the past decade or more and it really hasn’t worked out very well. It’s time to reconsider your choices.

I thought it was a damn thoughtful and also correct analysis of what rural Democrats -- all Democrats -- should talk about with their conservative neighbors. Mills -- like the campaign consultant he used to be -- lays out the specific Democratic messages that could begin to reverse the slide -- messages that come as questions for country people: "What's happened to your rural public schools?" "What's happened with your failing and disappeared rural hospitals?" (Republicans in the General Assembly stubbornly refused Medicaid expansion, until this year.) Mills adds a potential "What the hell?!" issue that could cut deep in rural counties -- the recent Republican imposition of a new sales tax regime on "services":

Who do you think pays more for car repairs, somebody driving a fifteen-year-old Ford F-150 or someone driving a brand new Tesla? And you know what they don’t tax? Accounting services. How many of you use accountants? I guarantee you, all of those millionaires do.

Today I finally got around to reading "The Political Geography of a Changing North Carolina" on CarolinaForward.org. It's an unsigned article, so possibly written by founder Blair Reeves. Whoever put this report together provides some valuable maps, statistics, and hits some of the same issues that Mills is also stressing for any renewed Democratic activism in rural counties.

By opposing Medicaid expansion for over a decade, North Carolina's lawmakers have forced 11 rural hospitalsto close. North Carolina is now #3 nationally for rural hospital closures, and despite millions of residents being in collections for medical debt, lawmakers have done nothing.

Lawmakers have carefully protected a 2011 ban on municipal broadband networks sponsored by telecom lobbyists, leaving wide swaths of the state at the mercy of spotty, unreliable and expensive broadband providers.

Long-running Republican opposition to adequately funding public schools, even after court orders to do so, has left rural schoolchildren in under-resourced schools with poorly paid teachers and staff, while urban counties can afford to supplement their schools.

These are not "culture war" issues. These are pocketbook issues, especially the one where government is supposed to help our kids get ahead in this world with a good, competitive education. Preachers have convinced their flocks that Democrats only want to turn everybody into homos and force the teaching of "diversity," which is their code for stuff that offends a church-goer, while Republican lawmakers take them for granted and continue to peddle fear of weird people and weird theories in school. Those are not real things. The real things are the ones Thomas Mills and CarolinaForward are talking about.

Berger/Moore Bow To Reality and Accept Obamacare

 

Yesterday afternoon, House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger held a joint news conference to announce the compromise between Berger's Senate and Moore's House that they promise will lead soon to the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. In other words, they've finally caved to the Affordable Care Act. NC was one of just 11 holdout states. Berger/Moore will not only sign onto the program, but they'll also be giving Governor Cooper a big win. Conservative hardasses are gonna lose their shit (e.g., The Daily Haymaker today).

The NC House under Speaker Tim Moore has already passed its version of Medicaid expansion, covering an additional half-million people who are below the poverty line. The bill has already passed a first reading in the Senate and is in the hands of the Rules Committee. It's always been up to the Senate, which means it's up to Phil Berger, and the announcement yesterday puts previous workproducts for Medicaid expansion on ice.

A sticking point as been a regulation on hospital expansions, the so-called certificates of need (CON) that large hospital chains evidently use to limit competition. The N.C. Healthcare Assoc. of hospitals defended the CONs in the Senate last year and succeeded in killing the version that contained a loosening of their control. But in the thing announced by Berger/Moore yesterday, CONs reform will be included so that new drug treatment and rehab facilities (especially) can break free of corporation monopoly. Berger, according to Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan's reporting, said that since the state would be giving 600,000 people a card that says they will now get free health care, "it's going to be somewhat problematic if we don’t increase the supply of folks that can treat them.”

Master of understatement, that one!

A major beneficiary of the Berger/Moore deal will be rural hospitals, which have been closing down in multiples in North Carolina. A separate feature of the Affordable Care Act, the Healthcare Access and Stabilization Program, will bring in an additional $8 billion annually to North Carolina, "with no additional cost to the state," along with $1.8 billion which can support behavioral health, public safety support, rural health care, and other needs.” Opioid epidemic money.

Hardcore Reaction

A post by "Reaganite," on Daily Haymaker cited above:

Any sell out “Republican” (who is really a Democrat-in-Drag) who votes for this left wing special interest excrement sandwich needs a primary. Our Republican legislative “leaders” are actually stalking horses for the Democrats and the left, and we need a fruitbasket turnover of the “leadership”. NONE of them are fit to serve.

Any of the traitors who betray the Republican base to brownnose sell out legislative “leaders” need to be abandoned in all future elections. They are no different than Democrats. If the choice in your district is a Democrat or a Democrat-in-Drag, there is no real difference, and it is time to just leave that race blank. You are screwed either way. That is what happened to many of those who betrayed the Republican base on repealing HB2, and conservatives did not support them in the next election, handing legislative seats to Democrats because the “Republicans” were sell-outs who were no better.

And conservatives need to organize a primary campaign to expose Timmy Moore’s lousy liberal legislative record when he tries to run for Congress. Lets jam HB2 repeal, the Green New Deal, and Obamacare Medicaid expansion down his miserable throat and make him totally toxic to Republican voters.

 

Both Republicans Representing Watauga Voted for Medicaid Expansion

 

Yesterday the NC House passed HB76 "Access to Healthcare Options" (Medicaid expansion under Obamacare) with both men representing Watauga County voting yes -- Ray Pickett, who represents most of the county and Destin Hall, who carved out Blue Ridge Precinct for his Caldwell District.

The bill passed 92-22 on its final reading. All Democrats voted for it and a bunch of majority Republicans too.

The bill goes now to the Senate. And that's where the trouble will begin.

Tim Moore's House Pisses Off Phil Berger's Senate

 

In a surprising about-face, Phil Berger's NC Senate passed a bill a month ago expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. Yesterday, Tim Moore's House Republicans, rather than signing on to the Senate's bill, rolled out its own bill which calls for more study of the issue and a vote on expansion only after the fall elections.

How did Phil Berger take this?

Seems like Tim Moore handed Democratic NC House candidates an issue, and Phil Berger has shown Democrats how to frame it.

Sheri Everts Accused of COVID Mismanagement

 

I've been hearing for literally weeks about AppState faculty's beef with Chancellor Sheri Everts about her lax policies regarding COVID, especially considering the current spike in Omicron which has coincided with the opening of the spring semester and in-person teaching. The faculty I hear from -- and see mentioned now in the press -- allege that Everts is unresponsive to faculty questions and complaints and -- worse -- simply absent from any collegial conversation about the best plague decisions. Faculty say Everts now goes into an automatic "defensive crouch" when challenged about anything -- which is just another form of hiding out.

What does the majority of faculty want? A recent faculty survey found that some 63.5% of the 441 faculty respondents said the university’s current COVID protocols will not allow the university “to continue to function normally, in a manner that permits them to provide a high-quality education to all of our students, without disruption, for the full spring semester” [reporter Joe Killian]. And...

Nearly 63% said they think it is either likely or very likely they will have to move their courses entirely online in the next few weeks due to COVID infections.

Overwhelming majorities also supported allowing faculty members to control the mode of instruction in their classes, requiring proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test for admission to all on-campus events and requiring all students, regardless of vaccination status, to undergo testing prior to the start of the semester.

The majority of respondents — 76% — said they would be willing to hold courses online for the first few weeks of the semester, until the current omicron-driven surge of infections peaks.

...so far the university’s administration hasn’t been willing to take any of the suggested steps.

AppState's protocol for COVID
accused of being mainly PR

Everts' fear of her own faculty -- or her ingrained disdain for them -- possibly goes back a couple of years (some would say farther than that):

Tensions between Everts and students and faculty at App State have been escalating since August 2020. At the time, the university’s Faculty Senate voted “no confidence” with regard to Evert’s leadership, over the campus’s handling of COVID-19. A no confidence vote is rare in UNC System history. [Joe Killian]

Killian also reports on an open letter that a prof of sustainable development (who also happens to be a former health economist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) sent to all students, alleging that the university is “failing to provide the leadership, guidance and support that students, faculty and the broader community needs”; followed by a mass email response to students from Everts' office alleging that the prof was peddling "misinformation"; which provoked followup questions to Everts' office from the press and from faculty demanding "what misinformation?"; and then finally an attempt at explanation from Everts' flack sent to reporter Killian that does not pass the smell-test among faculty.

Stella Anderson, a professor of management, said that Everts' administration is the worst case of mismanagement she's seen in her 29 years at the university. “It’s an unmitigated disaster,” Anderson said. “The administration and leadership failures and bone-headed communication is really astounding .... I’ve been at the table for a lot. I know good management and leadership and I know when I’m not seeing it.”

The chair of the AppState faculty senate offered the best explanation for Everts' intransigence: political shit ineluctably rolls downhill:

“The era we’re living in now in North Carolina higher education history is truly a hegemony,” Dr. Louis Gallien said. “You have a majority of Republican legislators who appoint the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors in turn appoint the Boards of Trustees. The Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors choose the chancellor. So you have a hegemonic philosophy of leadership and management those groups have. And it is not totally in sync with traditional shared governance principles.”

Sheri Everts is not about to buck the real bosses.

Hegemony, incidentally -- the word -- is just a fancy academic way to say "the power derived from the inability of any group to think and act independently."

How Joe Biden Will Begin To Reverse Trump Policies

We expect the newly inaugurated president to sign some 15 separate executive orders this afternoon, with more promised in the next weeks.  The collective effort was characterized by Biden's aides as “undoing” and “reversing” policies implemented by Trump that were “harmful” or “inhumane.” 

The Pandemic

Swiftly following his swearing in, President Biden plans to sign executive actions that will require masks on all federal grounds, and he will ask agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. He will urge Americans to don face coverings for 100 days while reviving a global health unit in the National Security Council — allowed to go dormant during the Trump administration — to oversee pandemic preparedness and response. He will also begin to reverse steps taken by President Trump to withdraw from the World Health Organization by dispatching Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, to speak at the international group’s executive board meeting tomorrow. He will create a White House Covid-19 response team that will coordinate across the federal government and with states on ramping up vaccinations, distributing more masks and gloves, expanding testing capacity, reopening schools and more. 

Immigration

The new president will sign an order repealing the ban on travel from several majority-Muslim nations. Another order will call on the Department of Homeland Security to continue an Obama-era initiative protecting “dreamers” from deportation and issuing them work permits as long as they qualified under the requirements laid out when the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, began in 2012. Biden will also end the national emergency over the border that Trump declared as a way to circumvent Congress when lawmakers would not grant him funding for his wall. He also promises to repeal the Trump administration’s interior immigration enforcement order that sought to withhold federal funds from cities that shielded undocumented immigrants. And he will halt construction on the border wall. 

The Census

The new president will nullify the Trump administration’s directive that attempted to exclude the counting of noncitizens from the U.S. census.

Climate

President Biden plans to sign an order revoking the permit, issued by the Trump administration, that allowed for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and he will sign an order to rejoin the Paris climate accord. The United States will officially be part of the 189-country climate agreement in 30 days.

Racial Equity

President Biden plans to rescind the “1776 Commission” established by the Trump administration to push a much more conservative (lily white) version of American history in public schools. That commission issued its report only this week to widespread scorn from historians because of its soft-soap on the history of American slavery. In other orders promised for coming days the president-elect has promised to root out systemic racism from our institutions, holding the federal government accountable for advancing equity for families across America.

Transgender Rights

The new president plans to revoke "in coming days" the ban on transgender people from serving in the military.

Abortion Rights

President Biden intends to reverse the so-called "global gag rule" (the "Mexico City policy") that blocks U.S. aid to organizations abroad that perform abortions or offer counseling on the procedure.

Biden Picks HHS Secretary and Director of CDC

 

Xavier Becerra, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

A critical position in coalescing the Biden's administration fight against the coronavirus pandemic, HHS is one of the government’s largest departments, with several agencies within it that are crucial to the federal response to the pandemic, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Becerra is currently California Attorney General. He was originally appointed to that job when Kamala Harris won a seat in the Senate. Becerra was subsequently reelected in his own right. Before becoming California A.G., Becerra was a 24-year member of Congress.

It is said that Becerra has an unorthodox background for HHS secretary -- some were hoping that Biden would choose a doctor or someone with medical training -- but one Biden insider said "the president-elect chose him because he regarded the attorney general of the country’s most populous state as someone who has used that platform and earlier roles to expand access to health care." [WashPost]

During Trump's four years, Becerra has been among the most outspoken state attorneys general, leading coalitions of Democratic colleagues in challenges to the current administration’s policies on immigration, the environment and health care, suing the federal government more than 100 times since taking office.

Rochelle Walensky, to become director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Walensky, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is well-respected for her work, including on the comparative effectiveness of treatment for HIV and AIDs.

Walensky received a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991. She earned her M.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1995, and then trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital until 1998. She then participated in the Massachusetts General Hospital/Brigham and Women's Hospital Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program, earning an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2001.

On the theory of "herd immunity, she has said, "[The idea] is predicated on the idea that you know who is going to get sick and you can somehow isolate and protect them, but there is absolutely no evidence that we can do this .... No-one is suggesting that lockdowns should be the default position. They are a last resort. But if we just let the virus run free without mitigation strategies, such as masking, our hospitals will overflow and that would mean we would no longer be able to take care of the population's health across the board."

 

The Body Count -- Michael Caputo

 

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump

Michael Caputo, the top spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services and a longtime ally of President Trump's, is taking a 60-day leave of absence after a social media tirade in which he falsely accused government scientists of engaging in "sedition."

HHS announced the leave in a news release yesterday, which said Caputo decided to take the two months off as the department's assistant secretary for public affairs "to focus on his health and the well-being of his family."

The leave of absence effectively removes Caputo from government operations through November's election. The statement also announced that Paul Alexander, whom Caputo had brought in as a scientific adviser, would be leaving the department altogether.

Last week, Caputo came under fire after reports that he and Alexander sought to edit and delay public health reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Emails from Alexander obtained by Politico complained to CDC Director Robert Redfield that the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report "hurt the President," and described data-based publications on the risk of the coronavirus in children as "hit pieces on the administration" that undermined Trump's school reopening plan.

If You Think the COVID Crisis Is Over, Think Again

I drove into downtown Boone yesterday to the post office. All the shops looked open, and the sidewalks were crowded with shoppers. I didn't see one person wearing a mask. Surely some were, but I didn't see them.

Because the Trump mal-administration has decided to ignore the pandemic, some people -- many people -- seem to think the whole thing's over. But get a grip, peeps. The infection and hospitalization rate in North Carolina keeps going up. On Monday, 739 people were hospitalized for COVID-19, a new single-day record high. The last record high was Friday. The trend-lines are all pointing up. The seven-day average of new cases topped 1,000. To date, 36,484 people in North Carolina have tested positive for COVID, and more than 1,000 people have died from the virus since late March.

After staying in the single-digits for weeks, confirmed infections in Watauga County shot up into the mid-30s, as more reopening goes forward and people stop being careful. There's a hot-spot outbreak on an AppState construction project, which looked for all the world like a coverup until the wife of a worker blew the whistle.

The WashPost reports that North Carolina is experiencing the second-largest spike in COVID cases in the nation behind Texas. Yet majorities on both the Watauga County Commission and the Boone Town Council have declined to require masks in public. That's a species of wishful thinking much in line with the Trump administration's "if we don't speak of it, it doesn't exist."

Meanwhile, In North Carolina Tim Moore and Some Bar Owners Compete for Title "Stupidest Human Beings on Earth"

Coronavirus is still raging in North Carolina and shows signs of accelerating. Yesterday the state posted the highest daily increase in cases ever, making Governor Cooper's caution about allowing 19,000 Republican ass-kissers to crowd into the Charlotte Spectrum Center in August look pretty reasonable.

Tim Moore.
Why is this man laughing?

Meanwhile, NC House Speaker Tim Moore and Rep. John Torbett are the main sponsors of an actual law to force the governor to allow 19,000 Republican ass-kissers to fill every seat in the Spectrum Center in August, because of course.

And a group of NC bar owners want their piece of helping to spread COVID-19. They've filed a law suit to force the governor to open them up. There are plenty of barflies willing to do their part to spread the virus.

Although Twitterman has stalked off in a huff over Governor Cooper's refusal to guarantee a full arena for his renomination, the executive committee running the Republican National Convention is being much more reasonable. They're proposing to do a scaled-down convention in Charlotte which would handle the essential business, like taking the vote on Trump's renomination, while planning Trump's acceptance spectacle is some other state, likely one with a toady Republican governor. This sounds like a kind of win-win for Charlotte -- increased convention business without the presence of Twitterman and the protests his presence are likely to inspire.

So, Sure, Let's Keep That Gas Pedal On the Floor!

According to the New York Times, North Carolina has the worst Covid-19 death rate for nursing home residents and workers in the Southeast. According to the report, 57% of state deaths in North Carolina have come from nursing home residents or workers.

"Coronavirus deaths in [Burlington, NC] are doubling faster than any other in the US. .... Alamance County, about 60 miles northwest of Raleigh in North Carolina, has topped headlines during the coronavirus pandemic with a defiant racetrack [where somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 race fans crowded together last Saturday night]. Now the rate of COVID-19 deaths in the county’s largest city has made national news. Burlington, a Piedmont community of 55,000 people, had the highest daily average growth rate of deaths in the United States as of May 27, according to data compiled by The New York Times over the last two weeks. With a daily growth rate of 11%, the number of deaths doubles every 6.7 days in Burlington, The Times reported. The next highest rate is in Roanoke, Virginia, where the number of deaths doubles every 7.6 days." [News and Observer]