This, this -- and this again: "The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken."

I've read it twice and can't find much to disagree with. It's what I've been saying for as long as I can remember, herein articulated more skillfully and comprehensively than I can imagine doing. There's nothing else left to be said. Just read it. I reprint the ending, with a lethal crescendo concerning one Jared Kushner ... self-anointed genius.

Whatever happened to Nicu Ceaușescu, anyway?

We Are Living in a Failed State, by George Packer (The Atlantic)

The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

 ... To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his father-in-law’s administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants are not traitorous members of a “deep state”—they’re essential workers, and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to the nation’s health. It turns out that “nimble” companies can’t prepare for a catastrophe or distribute lifesaving goods—only a competent federal government can do that. It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives. All the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation. Then came the virus and this strange defeat.

The fight to overcome the pandemic must also be a fight to recover the health of our country, and build it anew, or the hardship and grief we’re now enduring will never be redeemed. Under our current leadership, nothing will change. If 9/11 and 2008 wore out trust in the old political establishment, 2020 should kill off the idea that anti-politics is our salvation. But putting an end to this regime, so necessary and deserved, is only the beginning.

We’re faced with a choice that the crisis makes inescapably clear. We can stay hunkered down in self-isolation, fearing and shunning one another, letting our common bond wear away to nothing. Or we can use this pause in our normal lives to pay attention to the hospital workers holding up cellphones so their patients can say goodbye to loved ones; the planeload of medical workers flying from Atlanta to help in New York; the aerospace workers in Massachusetts demanding that their factory be converted to ventilator production; the Floridians standing in long lines because they couldn’t get through by phone to the skeletal unemployment office; the residents of Milwaukee braving endless waits, hail, and contagion to vote in an election forced on them by partisan justices. We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: The public housing resident, the gas leak, and another Duggins NAHA mishap. Time for a change?

Last week the Green Mouse received a call from a resident of the New Albany Housing Authority. She's had heart surgery in the past, and grapples with persistent health worries.

At some point after breakfast she noticed the smell of natural gas. Worried, at 10:00 a.m. she called NAHA's maintenance department to report the odor. Two hours passed without a return call or visit; she went outside (fortunately it was a temperate weather day) and after conferring with her son, called the fire department.

Finally around 1:00 p.m., three hours later, maintenance arrived and determined there was a gas leak in the vicinity of her water heater.

Apparently the employee answering the phone that morning in maintenance decided a potential gas leak wasn't important and could wait until after lunch.

Referencing the NBC News report linked here, the Mouse can only ponder whether the installation of carbon monoxide detectors is something David Duggins might contemplate for his fiefdom (as a side note, all of NAHA's upper managers were out of town at a meeting during the incident the Mouse recounts).

Maybe that's an insider job -- WINK WINK -- for a Gahan-appointed NAHA board member, sycophant and frequent donor Terry Ginkins. Those 2019 mandatory tithes are coming due, anyway.

But at the very least, perhaps a tad more training for the folks answering the phone?

Carbon monoxide is killing public housing residents, but HUD doesn't require detectors, by Suzy Khimm and Laura Strickler (NBC News)

Residents of a South Carolina public housing complex are demanding answers after two of their neighbors died from the gas.

... None of the apartments had carbon monoxide detectors, local authorities found. In fact, public housing is not required to have them under federal law: While all rental housing subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must have smoke detectors, the federal government does not have the same requirement for carbon monoxide detectors.

NBC News has found 11 deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning in HUD housing since 2003, based on local news reports.

Public housing residents are particularly vulnerable to carbon monoxide. High levels of the gas are more likely to harm the very young and the very old, and most of the 4.6 million families receiving HUD rental assistance are elderly, disabled or families with young children. Acute exposure to the gas can cause permanent brain damage, among other long-term health problems, and at high levels it can kill in minutes.

Schlock and awl: Duggins' captive NAHA to meet the candidates, prepare voter lists for future persuasion, and play-act some make-believe democracy.

But are they registered to vote?

Over at the New Albany Housing Authority, Commissar David "125K" Duggins is getting into the spirit of democratization, announcing that President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has endorsed Duggins' bid to become Executive Director for Life.

Not only that ... a party!

But seriously, there really will be a pre-primary candidate panel and loyalty oaths voter registration rally on Thursday, March 29, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Erni Avenue gym.

Structural engineers have affirmed that the gym should be able to withstand the shock waves of hypocrisy emanating from Team Gahan members in attendance.

Below, the text of the letter announcing the event. As a friend observed, "As you can see, an uninformed reader might come to the conclusion that Duggins cares about the residents."

NA Confidential readers know better, of course, as do South Seas islanders and the woman in the moon.

#FireGahan2019

The annual question: Why does the "rule" of Harvest Homecoming outweigh the interests of free speech on city-owned streets?

It's an annual question that hasn't ever been properly answered. Let's get David Duggins right on it, shall we? After all, Shane's busy dodging information requests.

Or ... maybe since City Hall itself and the Democratic Party machine (is there a difference?) both endorsed Bruce Hibbard's referendum, Harvest Homecoming was merely enforcing the governing junta's own gag-me-with-a-spoon order?

These people don't understand rule of law very well, do they?

Laughing. Out. Loud.

---

JEERS...

...to the pro-referendum people at Harvest Homecoming who told us that we could not campaign against the school tax referendum at Harvest Homecoming wearing our anti-referendum T-shirts and handing out fliers. They said we were causing an “incident.” Their stern demeanor was comical in retrospect since they were faking their authority. They warned that we could be escorted off the premises by a police officer, or worse. We politely suggested that they have the proper authorities approach us and we continued on our purpose. This happened Friday afternoon and again Saturday afternoon.

— George Mouser, Floyds Knobs

Rosenbarger's plaque, Gahan's yard sign, ethical quagmires, and the urgent need for deep cleansing in City Hall.

We're still not exactly sure how much the .8-mile-long Main Street "Improvement" Project cost, but whether $3 million, $4 million or probably more, it was intended (among other aims, most of them far more dubious) to improve the value of property on Main Street, at the request of a handful of residents, and to the exclusion of properties on the remainder of the streets in the city.

John Rosenbarger administered the project.

He lives on Main Street.

He will benefit from it.

He now has a Gahan sign in his yard.

We snicker at corruption in other countries, and throw around terms like "banana republic" and "kleptocracy" ...

Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, (from Greek: κλέπτης - kleptēs, "thief" and κράτος - kratos, "power, rule", hence "rule by thieves") is a term applied to a government seen as having a particularly severe and systemic problem with officials or a ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats) taking advantage of corruption to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service.

... but maybe we should refrain -- particularly those in the camp of the mayor who has rendered such notions so very close to home.

After all, given the immediate need for deep cleansing in City Hall, we wouldn't want to insult the world's kleptocrats, would we?

"Education. Schools. Children. Vouchers. Which word doesn't fit?"

My pen pal D(NM), a native New Albanian now residing elsewhere, sent this note the other day. Shortly after reading it, I saw St. Daniels's self-serving account of vouchers, and it occurred to me that whenever I hear Mitch Daniels say the words "social justice", I reach for my Irony Sickness Bag.

The governor who famously (facetiously?) referred to a "truce" in the culture wars now spends his days signing legislation dedicated to social engineering on a scale seldom glimpsed since the halcyon days of 20th-century "isms", then sells the souvenir pens on Ebay to finance his White House run.

Like my friend D's reaction, it makes me sick. Waiter: One of those irony bags, please. Extra large if you've got it.

Well Roger, whatareyougoingtodoaboutthismess?

Sorry ‘bout that; words spoken in anger tend to rush out without sufficient pause between. Oops, I’m beginning to sound like Yoda.

How can those idiots face their constituents, how can they face their G-d, when they pull off a stunt like “School Vouchers”? Of course, they are fully aware of the damage they’re going to do to the Indiana Public School system. What can they be thinking? If thinking is what they pretend to do?

The unthinking cruelty of these clowns; it goes to prove time after time that they are amoral to the ‘nth degree. I’m done with Indiana. I’ll never return; however this decision of mine won’t amount to a hill of beans in the long run. But, it will give my anger a focus.

I have to ask, where in Indiana is the one person who’ll stand up and speak out to remind their fellow Hoosiers that this is wrong? This is nothing but a sop to the ugliest of the radical right’s ambitions, and that is to reverse the civil rights movement in this country. To take us back to that imagined time in this country when white was right and those who weren’t were outta sight.

When I was in the sixth grade, attending the State Street Elementary School , the principal was Lillian Emery (of hated memory). She had declared, early on when the subject of integration of New Albany’s schools was discussed, that the only way a black child would walk into State Street School was over her dead body. We all, or at least a lot of us, held our collective breath and hoped that soon a new student would appear and grant our most fervent wishes.

So, one day, during recess I spotted that one black child, alone, away from the other students, crying, afraid, scared to death. I think he was a second grader, one little kid; and at that point the cruelty of the New Albany power merchants was out there for all to see. Unfortunately Miss Emery remained, fully ensconced on her throne. They even named the school after her, for a while; at least until her ugly story became public knowledge.

I tried to befriend and reassure that kid, but he was so miserable and afraid, he was literally inconsolable. I don’t remember if he was at school the next day, I don’t remember seeing him again. The school year ended and I was on to New Albany Junior High, on Spring Street, where integration was a reality. Not that everything was peaches and cream, but it worked, for the most part.

Now, the moral descendants of Lillian Emery are out to reverse the wheels of progress. Indiana’s most welcome to them. You’ll need to keep a weather eye out; I hear that Carrie Nation is reforming the W.C.T.U. for a second go around.

Be very watchful!

Sanders: "We've got to own up to it."

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)