A Couple Welcome Bits of Good News Among the Insanity–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Nov. 14, 2024

Indy Digest: Nov. 14, 2024

The news over the last week and a half has been awful. I mean, Matt Gaetz? For attorney general?! Irony and satire are officially dead.

Therefore, in an effort to keep myself (and perhaps you) from hiding in a corner and whimpering, here are a couple of bits of good news.

First: The Onion now owns InfoWars. No, this is not a headline from The Onion. (Actually, it IS a headline from The Onion … but it’s really true.) While this is undeniably hilarious, it’s also genuinely good news, as explained by The Associated Press:

Very, very cool. The fact that it displeased Alex Jones is a nice added bonus.

On a very different note: At a time when the new administration is threatening all sorts of effective medical programs (vaccines, fluoride in water, common sense) by proposing that RFJ Jr., head up the Department of Health and Human Services, dear god help us all, here’s a smidgeon of good health news, again from the AP:

The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

Feeling encouraged … what a concept!

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The Washington Post headline is “Liberals are fleeing X again—this time for Bluesky.” While I take issue with the headline—it’s certainly not just “liberals” who are fleeing the bot-ridden misinformation factory formerly known as Twitter—the new social media platform is certainly on the rise. Some details: “The upstart social network Bluesky is surging. It has more than doubled in size in the past three months. And in the eight days since the election, it has added more than 1.25 million users, bringing its total to more than 15 million as it topped Apple’s App Store rankings on Wednesday. Of those, some 8.5 million have logged in within the past month, spokesperson Emily Liu said Wednesday. That leaves Bluesky at least one order of magnitude short of X and Threads, each of which boast hundreds of millions of users. … The public embrace of Bluesky in recent days by a slew of influential political and media figures has given the site a shot in the arm and promoted it as a contender to become the left’s answer to Musk’s increasingly rightward-tilting X—a mantle Threads has resisted by downplaying hard news and political content. Zuckerberg’s recent overtures toward Trump have also dampened its appeal among some liberals.” By the way: If you’re on Bluesky, or you open account there, find the Independent and me personally!

• Our partners at Calmatters report that housing advocates are worried that Trump administration 2.0 could worsen the crisis in the state: “As California Democrats attempt to ‘Trump-proof’ the state and Republicans celebrate their party’s sweeping victory, the mood among some of the state’s most prominent housing advocates is glum. ‘Trump’s extremist economic agenda is going to tank the housing market and housing construction,’ Sen. Scott Wiener, one of the Legislature’s loudest YIMBY voices, said in an interview. That concern is based largely on actions taken during President-elect Donald Trump’s first presidency and his stated plans to deport massive numbers of immigrants and raise tariffs. Trump has offered few specific housing policy proposals. When CalMatters reached out to his campaign for more details, it didn’t get a response. That’s left housing experts, elected officials and journalists reading the tea leaves of his public statements, moves made by his first administration, and the ideas put forward by his former housing secretary, Ben Carson, in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint. If those are any indication, a Trump presidency will likely make it harder for immigrants, including mixed-status households, and other low-income Californians to access subsidized housing. It could also complicate efforts to build housing in the state that’s specifically designated as affordable.”

• It can be difficult to find a health-care provider that takes your insurance—and inaccurate directories, in my experience, are one of the biggest hindrances. ProPublica reports that state regulators know this is a problem—but are doing very little to fix it: “To uncover the truth about a pernicious insurance industry practice, staffers with the New York’s state attorney general’s office decided to tell a series of lies. So, over the course of 2022 and 2023, they dialed hundreds of mental health providers in the directories of more than a dozen insurance plans. Some staffers pretended to call on behalf of a depressed relative. Others posed as parents asking about their struggling teenager. … The more the staffers called, the more they realized that the providers listed either no longer accepted insurance or had stopped seeing new patients. That is, if they heard back from the providers at all. … Yet nearly a year after the publication of (New York Attorney General Letitia) James’ report, nothing has changed. Regulators can’t point to a single penalty levied for ghost networks. And while a spokesperson for New York state’s Department of Financial Services has said that ‘nation-leading consumer protections’ are in the works, provider directories in the state are still rife with errors. A similar pattern of errors and lax enforcement is happening in other states as well.”

• Today’s recall news involves … General Motors vehicles! CBS News says: “General Motors on Wednesday said it is recalling nearly 462,000 diesel-engine SUVs and pickup trucks in the U.S. because of a faulty transmission control valve that may fail and cause the rear wheels to lockup, increasing the risk of a crash. Drivers whose vehicles are affected by the transmission issue may experience harsh shifting ahead of any wheel problems, according to the automaker. The recall applies to the following GM models: 2020-2022 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, 2500, 3500; 2020-2022 GMC Sierra 1500, 2500, 3500; 2021 Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV, Chevrolet Tahoe, Suburban, GMC Yukon, Yukon XL. As a remedy, car dealers will install new transmission control module software for free, according to GM.”

• And … a really big fine for Ford because the company acted too slowly on a recall. The Associated Press reports: “Ford Motor Co. will pay a penalty of up to $165 million to the U.S. government for moving too slowly on a recall and failing to give accurate recall information. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that the civil penalty is the second-largest in its 54-year history. Only the fine Takata paid for faulty air bag inflators was higher. The agency said Ford was too slow to recall vehicles with faulty rearview cameras, and it failed to give the agency complete information, which is required by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act.”

• Finally … anytime the phrases “insurance fraud” and “bear costume” both apply to a story, you have my attention. NPR reports: “Four residents from the Los Angeles area were arrested this week after an investigation by the California Department of Insurance revealed that they allegedly used a life-sized bear costume to stage attacks on their vehicles in an attempt to secure a six-figure payout. … In January, the suspects claimed that a bear had entered their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost and caused interior damage while it was parked in Lake Arrowhead, a region in the San Bernardino Mountains known for its large black bear population. The suspects provided video footage of the alleged incident to their unnamed insurance company, which the department has since posted online. The video shows a furry figure entering through the side door, climbing around the backseat and crawling out, leaving scratch marks on the leather seats and door. ‘Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,’ officials said.”

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