RSN: FOCUS: Charles Pierce | There Is a Landmine in the Reconciliation Negotiations

 

 

02 October 21

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FOCUS: Charles Pierce | There Is a Landmine in the Reconciliation Negotiations
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Around about 4 o'clock Friday, the President of the United States stopped by the basement of the House of Representatives, where the hallways look like a yard sale in a fallout shelter, and tried to get everyone on the same page - or at the very least, on the same shelf of the library - regarding his infrastructure plans."

President Joe Biden visited Congress to push the two-track approach Friday, but Joe Manchin continues to butt heads with the progressives.

Around about 4 o’clock Friday, the President of the United States stopped by the basement of the House of Representatives, where the hallways look like a yard sale in a fallout shelter, and tried to get everyone on the same page—or at the very least, on the same shelf of the library—regarding his infrastructure plans, and the people in the meeting seemed clear that the president’s commitment to the Just Crazy Enough To Work gambit remains solid. “It was,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, “a very strong defense of both bills.”

Given that, it seemed unlikely that there would be a vote on anything on Friday.

“He emphasized that this bill is not $3.5 trillion, that it is zero dollars. It is 100 percent paid for,” said Rep. Kai Kahele of Hawaii. “He said both bills have to go together and we clearly don’t have an agreement on the reconciliation bill. If I were a betting man, I’d say there would be no vote on the [bipartisan] infrastructure plan.” Kahele also expressed the general sense of disappointment, to say the very least, that Senator Kyrsten Sinema has chosen this moment to absent her obstructionist self from Washington. “We’re here,” Kahele said. “The entire Democratic House caucus is here. We’re ready to negotiate. We’re ready to talk. And that’s pretty difficult to do when one of the very, very important people in this conversation has left town.”

All in all, I’ve come to the conclusion that the ginned-up media crisis enthusiasm has been way overblown, and that the best strategy is to keep the bills twinned—the president is right about that—and work the margins hard to get both of them passed at the same time. If the Democratic leadership were to pull anything remotely like the bait-and-switch of which the progressives are concerned, I think we’d have a new Speaker of the House within a week. And the best way to allay those fears is to keep the bills together while you squabble over the price tag.

“What I took from it is that he wanted to take the entire Build Back Better package together,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin. “The room was resonantly enthusiastic for it.”

Everybody was too polite to mention the Senate, and the ultimate fate of the reconciliation package there. “I’m in the trust-but-verify category on that one,” Raskin said.

Of all the activity on Capitol Hill this past week, the most moving episode was the testimony of three members of Congress—Pramila Jayapal, Cori Bush, and Barbara Lee—about their own abortions. Their frankness about the circumstances that led to their individual choices was an undeniable sort of witness that cut through the emotional wildfire currently surrounding the issue. Lee described how she, an overachieving A-level high-school student, got pregnant, and how her mother facilitated a trip to Mexico for what Lee described as a “back-alley abortion.” She provided a vivid description of the terror that surrounded the trip.

“I was one of the lucky ones, Madam Chair. A lot of girls and women in my generation died from unsafe abortions … My personal experience shaped my beliefs to fight for people’s reproductive freedom.”

One of the little-noticed moments of the week came when Senator Joe Manchin gave an interview to the National Review in which he stated flatly that he would not vote for the reconciliation package unless the Hyde Amendment, which has banned all public funding for abortion services since 1977, remains in place. From, with apologies, National Review:

Outside of the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday evening, Manchin briefly spoke to National Review:

National Review: Senator, you’ve been very firm on keeping the Hyde amendment on the appropriations bills. Are you concerned about that issue at all in reconciliation—

Manchin: Certainly—

NR: —with this new Medicaid program?

Manchin: Yeah, we’re not taking the Hyde amendment off. Hyde’s going to be on.

NR: In the new Medicaid program?

Manchin: It has to be. It has to be. That’s dead on arrival if that’s gone.

I later dropped this tidbit to a Democratic member of Congress who reacted as though I’d handed over a copperhead. This is indisputably a landmine in the ongoing negotiations, as the progressive caucus has made eliminating the Hyde Amendment one of the primary ancillary policy goals of the reconciliation bill.

WeeklY WWOZ Pick To Click: “Oye Isabel” (Iguanas): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1937, are some senators reacting to FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court. If you can read lips, you can figure out what they’re saying, but there certainly were a lot of politicians back then who looked like Deputy Dawg. History is so cool.

Oh, come ON.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

Since the start of the month, a pack of troublesome river otters has attacked people and pets in some of the the most popular outdoor areas, and even injuring a child. A 9-year-old boy was bitten several times near a pond in East Anchorage, and taken to the emergency room for a rabies shot. “This week, another woman was bitten while rescuing her dog from a similar group of river otters at University Lake,” a popular dog-walking area, Fish and Game said in a written statement. The same day, there was another dog bitten at a different part of the same lake.

I knew anything that cute had to be plotting something dire.

According to Fish and Game, river otter attacks have happened in recent years, but are not commonplace. It’s not clear if the incidents reported this fall are all from the same group of animals. River otters are able to range over large tracts of habitat, both overland and along connected bodies of water.

Roving gangs of attack otters? The fish and game people are not playing around. They’re sending out their…ah…wet teams.

If the animals are dispatched, they will be tested for rabies, which might explain their hostile reactions to dogs and humans of late. While it’s possible for otters to carry the disease, Fish and Game said that in recent years there’s been no report of rabid otters in Southcentral Alaska. Dispatching a small number of nuisance otters would not disrupt other populations distributed across the area, according to the department.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, CBS News? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

The two new species are related to an ancient "unusual and controversial" family of dinosaurs, according to a report by paleontologists at the University of Southampton that was published in Scientific Reports on Wednesday.

The first, Ceratosuchops inferodios, which means "horned crocodile-faced hell heron," has a head filled with low horns and bumps along its brow region, scientists found, and is believed to have had a hunting style similar to a "terrifying heron."

Tell us how you really feel, Namer of Dinosaur Person.

The second discovery, Riparovenator milnerae, which means "Milner's riverbank hunter," is similar to that of the Ceratosuchops inferodios and has a long tail and a crocodile-like snout.

This guy clearly needs a better branding team. Of course, next to horned crocodile-faced hell heron, almost any other name would look like a very pale substitute. And that’s only one reason that dinosaurs lived then to make lexicographers happy now.

Well, who knows what else is planned for this mudslide exercise in representative democracy? Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn masks indoors, and get the damn shots. Boosters, too. Or I’m calling in the otters. I am not playing here.

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In historic effort, rabies on Cape Cod again being fought on land and in the air

Cynthia McCormick Cape Cod Times

Published Sep 10, 2021 

The fight against raccoon-variant rabies is again taking to the skies above Cape Cod as part of what is described as the largest such effort in Massachusetts history.

Starting next week, officials will dispense vaccine packets from low-flying helicopters in an historic effort to immunize raccoons and other wild mammals from the deadly rabies virus.

Two federally owned aircraft — either black and red or orange and white — are scheduled to start dropping the oral vaccine packets or sachets off-Cape on Monday, weather permitting, from a height of 300 to 400 feet, said Brian Bjorklund, a wildlife rabies biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The process is expected to start Wednesday or Thursday on Cape Cod, out of Barnstable Municipal Airport. “We’ll be baiting from Lakeville to Orleans,” Bjorklund said.

Waxy vaccine pellets also will be distributed by hand from vehicles in locations along Nantucket Sound and by the Massachusetts Military Reservation. Baits by hand is scheduled to start Sept. 20. Officials also will be stocking bait stations on Buzzards Bay during the distribution. 

A total of 156,000 rabies vaccine pellets and packets will be distributed through Oct. 8 by town, county and federal employees and volunteers, Bjorklund said.

“This will be the largest distribution of oral rabies vaccine bait in Massachusetts history.”

An expanded program

The baiting effort comes on the heels of a similar endeavor in July that was in response to the May discovery of a rabies-stricken raccoon in Hyannis.

It was the first case of terrestrial — or nonbat rabies — on Cape Cod in eight years.

The discovery prompted wildlife officials and the Cape Cod & Southeast Massachusetts Rabies Task Force to expand the geographic and seasonal boundaries of the Cape’s annual spring and fall baiting program.

In addition to adding the July program, officials extended the boundaries of the bait zone up through parts of Orleans. Baits will be distributed in Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Brewster, Harwich and Chatham on Cape Cod, and also in Plymouth, Wareham, Carver, Kingston, Middleboro, Rochester, Marion, and Lakeville.

The goal is to keep terrestrial rabies from spreading beyond the raccoon in Hyannis, Bjorklund said. “So far, knock on wood, we’ve only had that one case.”

Rabies was first discovered in Massachusetts in 1992 and first identified on the Cape in 2004. By 2006, it had made its way to Provincetown. The last rabid raccoon on the peninsula was identified eight years ago, also in Hyannis.

When surveillance of roadkill animals and other mammals did not show evidence of rabies, the bait zone was moved closer to the canal and did not extend beyond Route 149 in Barnstable, Bjorklund said.

It will be up to federal rabies management officials whether or not to stick with the expanded bait zone in the future, he said.

Why vaccine is needed

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention determined through a genetic analysis that the rabid raccoon found in May in Hyannis originally came from across the bridge, Bjorklund said.

“They were able to pull DNA from the actual rabies virus itself and concluded it matched closely with the rabies virus that is circulating in the northern Plymouth County area.”

Bjorklund said he didn’t know if the raccoon was transported to the Cape in a live animal trap or  hitched a ride on an 18-wheeler or trash train. “We want to make sure people know transportation of wildlife is illegal.”

Oral rabies vaccines immunize animals against rabies upon being swallowed. In addition to dispensing the vaccine-impregnated baits, wildlife officials this summer trapped, vaccinated and released 700 raccoons on the Mid-Cape.

Raccoons can spread rabies to other wildlife, pets and people. There is no known cure for the neurological virus, which is almost 100% fatal unless people who have been bitten or scratched receive a series of shots to prevent rabies from taking hold.

The availability of prophylactic treatment has reduced the number of rabies cases in humans to about three per year in the United States, according to Catherine Brown, state epidemiologist and state veterinarian with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

In 2012, Marstons Mills resident Kevin A. Galvin became the first person since 1935 to die of rabies acquired in Massachusetts.

Galvin was bitten by an infected bat, for which no vaccination program exists.

Bait won't hurt pets

Karl von Hone, Yarmouth’s director of natural resources and co-chair of the rabies task force, asked residents to keep their pets leashed and away from any oral vaccine packets or pellets, especially during the two-week distribution program.

“Every dose that is consumed by a dog is considered a loss. It could have gone to an unvaccinated raccoon or coyote,” Bjorklund said. He said the packets cost $1.29 apiece and the blocks or pellets cost $1.50 each.

“The bait itself is not harmful to people or animals,” said Erika Woods, deputy director of Barnstable County’s Department of Health and Environment and co-chair of the rabies task force. If pets swallow them, “it might upset their stomachs,” she said.

Bjorklund said the latest information, a distribution map and daily updates during the oral rabies vaccination bait distribution event will be available on the Cape Cod & Southeast Massachusetts Rabies Task Force’s Facebook page.

People who find baits are asked to call 877-722-6725 so that baiting teams can determine better locations, he said.