Op-Ed: What should the U.S. do with its surplus vaccines? Follow the playbook it used during WWII
The United States is making and distributing COVID-19 vaccines so fast that production will soon outstrip demand, leading officials to ask: What should we do with the extra doses? Most answers have focused on the home front: Dozens of states, including California, are rapidly opening vaccination eligibility to all adults, and President Biden has doubled the speed of his initial rollout calendar, now calling for 200 million Americans to be vaccinated by the end of April.
C’mon President Biden, end the reefer madness
In vast stretches of this country, it’s now legal for an adult to buy and use marijuana. But that perfectly legitimate activity can still get you fired from your job. A few White House staffers learned that the hard way recently.
Mr. Potato Head becomes woke capitalism’s hot potato
Every now and then I wonder about the cultural historians who will have to — presumably straight-faced — write a history of the past few years in America. A little over a year ago, I wrote a column for this very website about the death of Mr. Peanut: the monocle-sporting Planter’s Peanuts mascot (his death, it turned out, was greatly exaggerated). I thought at the time we’d reached the nadir of late modernity. I was wrong. The latest cultural outcry concerns Mr. Potato Head. T
THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES OF WRITERS
While I was away from the paper for a couple of weeks, several people came up to me at the Destination, my favorite coffee shop where my friends and I meet every morning. They ask why there was nothing written by me for the paper recently. Good question.
America’s disability lifelines are badly eroded when we need them most
Thousands of poor Americans and those with disabilities are missing out on much-needed income benefits during the pandemic. The Social Security Administration recently announced a 22% decrease from January 2020 to January 2021 in the number of people receiving Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, the benefit program available to the very poorest Americans. There are no January stats yet for the number of Americans receiving Social Security disability payments (SSDI), but the annual trend is clearly down, said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
