Tag: Georgia

These 4 states could decide control of Congress in 2022

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Watch Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona

ANALYSIS — More than 16 months before Election Day, new House district lines haven’t even been drawn, and yet the fight for Congress is likely to hinge on the outcomes in four critical states.

On a basic level, every state matters in the Senate, considering Republicans need to gain just a single seat to get to the majority. Each significant recruitment development (such as if GOP Gov. Chris Sununu challenges Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire) would instantly affect the handicapping of a race and the fight for control. But there are other states less dependent on a single candidate.

Every seat also matters in the House, where Republicans need a net gain of five seats for a majority — a paltry number in a body of 435 members and in the face of the midterm history, which favors the party out of the White House. And some states, such as Texas, are of particular importance to one of the chambers. But a handful of states are hosting competitive races that will affect control of both the House and the Senate. Continue reading.

Reopening reality check: Georgia’s jobs aren’t flooding back

A month after easing lockdown restrictions, the state is still seeing a steady stream of unemployment claims, economic data shows.

Georgia’s early move to start easing stay-at-home restrictions nearly a month ago has done little to stem the state’s flood of unemployment claims — illustrating how hard it is to bring jobs back while consumers are still afraid to go outside.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits have remained so elevated that Georgia now leads the country in terms of the proportion of its workforce applying for unemployment assistance. A staggering 40.3 percent of the state’s workers — two out of every five — has filed for unemployment insurance payments since the coronavirus pandemic led to widespread shutdowns in mid-March, a POLITICO review of Labor Department data shows.

Georgia’s new jobless claims have been going up and down since the state reopened, rising to 243,000 two weeks ago before dipping to 177,000 last week. The state cited new layoffs in the retail, social assistance and health care industries for the continued high rate of jobless claims that have put it ahead of other states in the proportion of its workforce that has been sidelined. Continue reading.

‘It’s just cuckoo’: Brian Kemp apologizes after state Health Department chart wrongly shows downward trend in COVID-19 infections

AlterNet logoGeorgia Gov. Brian Kemp has been widely criticized by health experts for prematurely reopening non-essential businesses in his state, and even President Donald Trump — who has been calling for states to ease coronavirus-related restrictions sooner rather than later — asserted that Kemp was moving too quickly. Now, more criticism is coming Kemp’s way over reports that the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website showed a decrease in new coronavirus infections in parts of the state where no such decreases were occurring.

Journalists Willoughby Mariano and J. Scott Trubey of the Atlanta Journal Constitution explain, “In the latest bungling of tracking data for the novel coronavirus, a recently posted bar chart on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website appeared to show good news: new confirmed cases in the counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks. In fact, there was no clear downward trend. The data is still preliminary, and cases have held steady or dropped slightly in the past two weeks.”

After “more than a day of online mockery, public concern and a letter from a state representative,” Mariano and Trubey report, the Georgia Department of Public Health changed the graph on Monday morning, May 18. Continue reading.

GOP Governors Who Kept States Open See Virus Spiking Now

Last week, five Republican governors published an opinion piece in the Washington Post under the headline, “Our states stayed open in the covid-19 pandemic. Here’s why our approach worked.”

The latest coronavirus data from two of those states shows that the approach did not work.

“While our specific approaches may differ, we have all kept our states ‘open for business’ and delivered food and other goods Americans need during this pandemic,” wrote Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, and Mike Parson of Missouri. All but Parson were among the seven governors who refused to issue statewide “stay-at-home” orders, even after Surgeon General Jerome Adams urged the nation to stay home to curb the pandemic. Continue reading.

Smartphone data shows out-of-state visitors flocked to Georgia as restaurants and other businesses reopened

Washington Post logoOne week after Georgia allowed dine-in restaurants, hair salons and other businesses to reopen, an additional 62,440 visitors arrived there daily, most from surrounding states where such businesses remained shuttered, according to an analysis of smartphone location data.

Researchers at the University of Maryland say the data provides some of the first hard evidence that reopening some state economies ahead of others could potentially worsen and prolong the spread of the novel coronavirus. Any impetus to travel, public health experts say, increases the number of people coming into contact with each other and raises the risk of transmission.

“It’s exactly the kind of effect we’ve been worried about,” said Meagan Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Continue reading.

GOP Gov. Brian Kemp’s elevation of pseudostupidity is a Trump characteristic that endangers us all: clinical psychiatrist

AlterNet logoGov. Brian Kemp (R) dumbfounded and dismayed many recently with his decision to allow nonessential businesses to reopen in Georgia when even Trump said this move is too soon. It followed Kemp’s astonishing announcement earlier this month that he had not known asymptomatic people could transmit the highly contagious coronavirus, although every governor in the country had previously been briefed on this. His behavior left many wondering if Kemp really could be that clueless or whether something else is going on.

As a clinical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I am often faced with untangling questions like these: Are people genuinely unable to grasp a concept, or are they hiding knowledge from themselves for some reason unknown even to them, or are they aware they know better but are simply pretending not to know? Bluntly, are they just plain stupid (genuinely of low intelligence) or more insidiously pseudostupid—feigning a lack of understanding that can serve various motives and purposes? As a concerned Georgia resident, Kemp’s handling of this pandemic has resurfaced this question for me front and center.

Kemp ran as a gun toting conservative and may truly believe no invisible enemy is going to get the better of him or his constituents. This would be an example of a kind of everyday denial—”I can smoke all I want, cancer’s never going to get me.” That’s just plain stupid. Or he may understand fully the risks of his decision but realize his political survival depends on the success of his gamble. His preposterous disclaimer in early April followed now by his decision to throw caution to the wind then would exemplify pseudostupidity. Continue reading.

“I’m being forced to choose between my health and my job”: Georgia’s controversial reopening plan, explained

Georgia’s governor is determined to reopen the state’s economy, ready or not.

Kristen Courville, a self-employed hairstylist in Alpharetta, Georgia, is in a terrifying conundrum: Her governor, Brian Kemp, says she can go back to work on Friday. On the one hand, her bills are racking up, and she needs to pay her rent. On the other hand, she’s scared of getting sick, and whenever she does open up, she’s worried clients won’t want to come in anyway. She’s laid out a plan to reopen, but it’s not been an easy decision.

“I’m being forced to choose between my health and my job,” Courville, 32, said.

The coronavirus crisis is hardly over in Georgia, but the state’s leadership has decided it’s time to start reopening parts of the economy there anyway. Republican Gov. Kemp announced in a tweet on Monday that businesses such as gyms, hair salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, bowling alleys, and nail salons will be allowed to resume some operations on Friday, April 24. And on Monday, April 27, theaters, social clubs, and restaurant dine-in services will be able to start back up as well. Continue reading.