Stop Worrying About the Zika Virus

Or: Answering Your Zika Questions in Five Parts, with help from my Good Buddies at the CDC

1. "I think I got the Zika virus!"

You probably don't have Zika. Even if you get 150 mosquito bites a week, you probably don't have Zika. Even if you've seen Zika on the news a lot lately. Even if all your friends are tell you that you have Zika. Even if you read the tea leaves and they spelled out Z I K A.

Why? Because Aedes aegypti, the mosquitoes that are most likely to spread the Zika virus, live in tropical, sub-tropical and temperate climates. Is it possible that you could still contract the virus if you live in a non-tropical climate? Of course! Is it likely? Not at all. The same mosquitoes that spread Zika virus also spread dengue fever, and I don't know the last time I heard about someone in the United States contracting dengue fever.

Serious epidemiology discussions, ft. memes

2. "No, I have Zika, my doctor told me so!"

Ok, so you have Zika. Thankfully, most people with Zika don't even know that they have the disease, because they don't even show symptoms. People are rarely hospitalized and almost never die from Zika. The worst thing you're looking at is a week of fever, rash, joint pain and headaches.

The bear just wants you to CHILL OUT

3. "I don't care about me, I care about my future children! My Zika virus will cause birth defects for any children I may bear!"

More good news on the horizon. The incubation period for Zika, or the time it takes between being infected and showing symptoms, is a week. And, once you've contracted it, the virus stays in your blood for about a week more. On average, you're looking at two weeks of being infected with Zika, after which you are likely to be protected from future infections. Your future children will be fine.

Take a deep breath

4. "But I'm pregnant right now!"

Unfortunately, if you are currently pregnant and you have Zika, you are the one group that needs to worry. CDC scientists recently concluded that Zika was causing microcephaly, a birth defect, among babies in Brazil. Zika isn't the only thing that causes microcephaly, and babies can be born with this condition due to genetic changes, other infections, and exposure to toxins. 

While we know that there is a strong link between pregnant women having Zika and microcephaly, there is still so much scientists don't know. It's unclear if every pregnant woman with Zika passes the virus to her fetus. We don't know if every fetus exposed to the virus develops microcephaly. There is no vaccine against Zika, or treatment once you have it, so right now, the best way to prevent Zika is to prevent mosquito bites. 

5. "Wait...so do I have to worry about Zika or not?"

If you're currently pregnant, and live in an area that's seen a lot of Zika cases, yes you probably do have to worry, and should take steps right now to prevent mosquito bites.

If you're currently pregnant, and don't live in an area that has had many confirmed cases of Zika, maybe you have to worry a little. Avoid travel to countries on this list, and take steps to prevent mosquito bites this summer.

If you're not pregnant, you do not have to worry about Zika at all. I can repeat, for those who might be worried. If live in the United States, and you're not going to get pregnant in the next two weeks, you have nothing to fear. And one last time, to make sure you really heard it: Zika is nothing to worry about!!!!!!

In Their Defense

Remember when this blog was just about complicated Congressional bills instead of my opinions about the election and sexism? After trying (and mostly failing) to write about polls and why they're flawed, I decided to tackle a far easier subject and discuss the most recent defense bill that just passed the House, but will probably be vetoed.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 allocates money to the Department of Defense, which in turn, funds the military. I'll spare you an exhaustive account of everything that's in the bill, because the bill is hundreds of pages long, and I don't have time to read it all. The bill appropriates 23 billion dollars in funding, to allow current military campaigns to continue through April of 2017, at which point, the new president will have to request supplemental funding.

Oh my God, how embarrassing, how did a photo of the next president make it into this post?

This is where the first controversy comes in, as both the White House, and the Senate Armed Services Committee feel that this bill gambles with military funding, because the money would run out in April, which is unusual for appropriations bills. The White House has accused Congress of "short-funding" the military, and the Senate will likely pass a different bill that appropriates more money, which would mean there would have to be a conference, so that both houses could agree on a bill to send to the president.

Despite this debate, the bill passed the House last night, 277 to 147, but unlike military appropriations bills of the past, almost all the Democrats voted against the bill. "Short-funding" of the military wasn't the only reason Democrats voted against it, but before I go into what's actually in the bill, I'll tell you some proposals that didn't make it in. For example, there was going to be a provision that required women to register for the draft, but that didn't make it into the final bill. Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) introduced an amendment to move prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay, but it failed 163-259.

Oh my God, how embarrassing, how did a photo of my next boyfriend make it into this blog post?

One of the big sticking points in the bill is an amendment that wasn't brought up in the Rules Committee, but added by Representative Steve Russell (R-OK) during a mark-up session in late April. The amendment would create protections and exemptions for religious associations and corporations that are also Federal contractors. Gay rights groups argue that an amendment like this would undermine an executive order President Obama signed in 2014 that made it illegal for Federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

Several legislators offered amendments to remove the Russell amendment from the bill, on the grounds that further discrimination against LGBTQ people would be an unintended consequence of this broad language. To editorialize, discrimination against LGBTQ people is absolutely an intended consequence of this kind of language, and the GOP knows it.

Even more shady, an amendment proposed by Representative Sean Maloney (D-NY) to strip discriminatory language from the bill actually appeared to be passing the House, until some Republicans were persuaded to change their votes.

At 11:27am Eastern Standard Time (thank you C-SPAN!)

And then at 11:33am Eastern Standard Time

Why did people change their votes, even though it appears that voting time is over? According to the many House Democrats I follow on Twitter, Republicans held the vote open while they convinced people to vote against the Amendment.

Both the short-funding, and the discriminatory amendments have led the White House to threaten to veto the bill and right now, enough Democrats have voted against it, that it doesn't seem possible that a veto could be overridden. Does that mean that military funding is in danger? You bet! Remember when we talked about how bad riders are? Without the line item veto, the President can either accept the bill, discrimination and all, or veto both funding and discrimination. Here's hoping both houses can work out a compromise, but at this point, I feel like that's hoping for a new season of Agent Carter; well intentioned, but unlikely and bound to lead to disappointment.

We're gonna miss you Peggy!

Fired Up about the Death Penalty

This week on West Wing, Best Wing Molly and I basically spent the whole time reinforcing each others opinions on the death penalty with a few side anecdotes about Tony Hillerman, murder at sea, and Kenny, Joey Lucas' sign language interpreter who is probably my favorite person in any television series. Listen to the episode here, and follow us on Twitter here.

Shabbat Shalom to all my goys.

Episode 7, which summarizes Take This Sabbath Day, has a ton of facts and we were pretty fired up when we were talking about it, unlike everyone else in that Fake White House. In this episode, the Supreme Court denies a stay of execution for a man facing the death penalty, which means the President is literally the only person who can save this man's life. The actions of the Supreme Court mean that this man was facing the Federal death penalty, which is applied in cases of treason, terrorism, large scale drug crimes and federal murder.  

Murder becomes a federal crime punishable by the death penalty when someone is murdered in connection with a drug arrest (as is the case in this episode), when an elected official is murdered, or a murder for hire. Murder can also become a federal crime based on where it is done, like murder at sea, or killings on a Native American reservation. 

Because of the 1885 Major Crimes Act, certain crimes, including murder, are prosecuted federally if they are committed on Native American reservations. This means that someone who lives on a reservation in New Mexico could face the federal death penalty for a crime, even though the state of New Mexico repealed the death penalty in 2009, thanks to the tireless efforts of State Representative Gail Chasey (in addition to being a powerful state legislator and all around amazing woman, Representative Chasey gave me my first political internship). If you ever needed proof of how racist our justice system was, this is a good place to start.

Representative Gail Chasey, looking on as Governor Richardson signs the bill repealing the death penalty.

According to Molly, this tug-of-war between tribes and federal law enforcement is an issue in many Tony Hillerman books, and according to me, there is a middle school in Albuquerque named after Tony Hillerman, because there aren't a ton of famous people to name things after in Albuquerque.

Straight up, this is not what the middle school used to look like, I think they're doing some renovations.

We both have a lot of problems with the death penalty, which are discussed in detail on the podcast, but one of the main empirical issues with the death penalty is that it costs so much more than regular prison. Housing an inmate in prison for a year costs between 40,000 and 168,000 dollars. By contrast, the death penalty costs up to 11 million dollars a year, as death penalty trials are 50% more expensive than trials where lawyers seek life without parole. In California, it costs 300 million per execution, as death penalty proceedings can drag on for up to 25 years, costing taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars.

Seems like some of that 300 million could be put to better use, remedying societal ills, but hey, our government's priorities aren't always right. We go into far more detail on the podcast about our death penalty opinions, hangovers, liquor laws in Buffalo New York, and the dark side of the walk-and-talk, so what are you waiting for? Check out the podcast! And if you really want to support us, follow us on Twitter! We're promise to be as fun as Josh Lyman after a night of heavy drinking.

Ah, Mr. Lyman and his delicate constitution

Still Relevant After All These Years

If you had told me that the 1994 Crime Bill was going to play a huge role in the 2016 election, I would have been a little surprised. And yet here we are, with a lot of accusations being tossed around about the crime bill, and me not knowing much about it, beyond what's been thrown around by my Facebook friends.

So here you go, a primer on the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. To paraphrase John Mulaney, I know it's kind of stupid to write a blog post about a bill that was passed 22 years ago, but I wasn't a political blogger back then.

In reference to Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

The gigantic 1994 bill included things that today we see as incredibly important and necessary, like the Violence Against Women Act and an assault weapons ban. It provided more money for community policing, and increased the number of police officers.

The bill also did things that I, and many others, see as problems like the three strikes law, which ensured mandatory life in prison without parole, for people who had committed three violent Federal crimes. The bill also expanded the Federal death penalty, eliminated inmate education, and created new Federal offenses, all of which has lead to an increase in the United States prison population. 

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the 1994 Crime Bill was a good thing, or even explain the context of its passage, because I think "there was lots of crime" is a bad reason to expand the death penalty and cut inmate education. Neither of those actions will do anything to reduce crime, now or in 1994. And I'm not even going to say that the crime bill reduced violent crime, because numerous studies have shown that it didn't.

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was not a well-written, sustainable bill. It has ended up causing more problems than it solved, and some of the more progressive measures of the bill never actually materialized.

If you've been following the election, you'll know that Hillary Clinton has been taking a lot of heat for her husband's crime bill. You may also have noticed that Bernie Sanders is taking far less heat for his support for the bill. Sanders voted for the 1994 when he was in the House. Furthermore, you may have noticed that people rarely bring up Joe Biden when they talk about the bill, and no one has forced him to apologize, even though he was the primary Senate sponsor of the bill.

Why Joe? Why?

We should be questioning the past actions of our politicians, and they shouldn't get a pass for the bad decisions that they made in the past. We need to interrogate the language that they used, we need to hold them accountable for their opinions, and we need to demand to know how they're going to fix those mistakes. It's our duty as citizens to question our elected officials.

At the same time, is it a little weird that people seem to have focused all their energy on the woman who supported a bill (that her President husband thought was very important) rather than the men who wrote, shaped, and voted for the bill? I think so, but that's also the nature of politics in 2016.

After all, I don't have any real opinions!

PACking Heat

Campaign finance is a gigantic and complicated issue, and there's no way I can address it in one blog post, but I did want to explain some of the particulars of Super PACs, since they seem to be a hot-button topic with a lack of clear information readily available (or at least a lack of clear information that I could find easily).

PAC stands for Political Action Committee, and traditional PACs have been around since the 1940s. These PACs are usually run by companies, unions, or groups of people with a similar ideology. People contribute funds to the PAC, and the PAC is then able to donate that money to a wide variety of candidates. Individuals can contribute up to 5,000 dollars a year to a PAC, which is higher than the normal limit of 2,700 which individuals can give to a single candidate. The PAC can then give up to 5,000 dollars to an individual candidate, and up to 15,000 to a national party.

For example, I as an individual can give 2,700 dollars to support the re-election of my favorite Senator, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Then, I can give up to 5,000 more dollars to LPAC, a lesbian political action committee that supports the election of candidates who champion LGBTQ rights. They could then give up to 5,000 dollars to Tammy Baldwin's campaign, and up to 15,000 dollars to the Democratic Party.

The hero we deserve

How is a PAC different from a Super PAC? While an individual can make only a 5,000 dollar contribution to a PAC, the money someone can give to a Super PAC is unlimited, and largely unregulated. While Super PACs are require to report the identity of their donors, they can take money from something called a "dark money" non-profit, or a 501(c)(4), which is not required to report the identity of their donors, but can solicit unlimited contributions.

So let's say I form the Parity Super PAC, with the goal of electing a Senate that looks like America, and is at least half-female. Now, I can not only take unlimited contributions from a variety of rich and powerful women who agree with my goal, but I can also solicit funds from non-profits and other 501(c)(4) corporations who do not have to disclose the identity of their donors. This means that I could be taking in a lot of money from rich and powerful people all around the world, and keeping their identities a secret.

You just know that Prime Minister Trudeau would support my Parity PAC

And now I can give unlimited money to Tammy Baldwin, and Tammy Duckworth and all the other amazing Tammy's running for the Senate right? Wrong, actually. A Super PAC, unlike a regular PAC or the national party committees, or an individual, cannot donate money directly to candidates or party committees.

In fact, legally, Super PACs can't coordinate with candidates at all. What can they do? Usually, Super PACs make ads for and against candidates. When you see a shady ad that isn't made by a candidate, it was probably created and funded by a Super PAC.

Remember when Ted Cruz put out 15 hours of footage on the Internet for everyone to see? And we were all like "why Ted, you look like an idiot, why would you put any of this on YouTube?" He had to put that footage on YouTube because legally, he can't email it to the Super PAC that would make positive ads about him. Mitch McConnell did the same thing, which gave us the delightful McConnelling game by the Daily Show, where people put new songs over video footage of Mitch McConnell. They have to give the Super PACs footage to work with, so that ads can be created on the Super PACs dime.

Ted Cruz: Not successful at acting like a human

Because Super PACs can't coordinate with candidates, sometimes the PAC will end up hurting the candidate more than helping them, by presenting a different message than what the candidate hopes to present. And in my professional blogging opinion, this election cycle showed that no matter how much Super PAC money you have, you can still lose badly if you are not a good campaigner and a good fundraiser, independent of Super PAC funds. And if you don't believe me, look at Jeb Bush (tons of Super PAC money, terrible campaigner) or Scott Walker (tons of Super PAC money, couldn't raise enough campaign cash to continue to pay his staffers).

Are Super PACs a problem? Yes, because citizens deserve to know who is donating to what campaign, and there should be limits on how much people can donate. But is a well-funded Super PAC necessary to win an election? Absolutely not, and grassroots organizing of people can and has overcome money in politics. And reforms are possible to reign in Super PACs and fix campaign financing, so don't give up hope! But if you need to calm down after learning about Super PACs, you really should watch the McConnelling Daily Show segment. It's truly a work of art.