(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where people are disagreeing everywhere you look and it makes you want to stop and read a book.

It had to happen sooner or later. Some wingnut poser had to adopt the role of COVID-19 Tough Guy. Come on down, Henry McMaster, governor of the home office of American sedition. From the Charlotte Observer:



Schools and government offices across the state should stay open, and large events should not be canceled, McMaster said during a press conference with reporters Wednesday, adding that he himself will be participating in a Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Greenville this weekend. “There remains no cause for public alarm in South Carolina,” McMaster said. South Carolina had two confirmed and eight presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 as of Wednesday afternoon. Most of those cases are concentrated in Camden. “We’re following the advice, instructions and leadership of health authorities in our state,” McMaster said. “The World Health Organization deals with the world as a whole, not individual countries. The CDC has declared no such thing in the United States.”



McMaster said he also would not be asking officials to take any additional precautions — such has putting up signs warning about the coronavirus or increasing the amount of hand sanitizer available — at the S.C. State House, which sees traffic from hundreds of staff members, legislators, lobbyists and visitors every say. “At this point, I don’t think signs need to go up,” McMaster said. “I think everybody knows the coronavirus is in our state as it is in other states.”



You’d be excused if you think that Governor McMaster is something of a dunce. South Carolina: too small for a republic, too large for an insane asylum, but just the right size for a chronic ward.

There is going to be more of this, what with Fox News and right-wing radio goons feeding metric fcktons of malarkey to their audiences of elderly shut-ins—who are, coincidentally, the population most vulnerable to the pandemic.



Governor Mike Dunleavy, reporting for duty. Becky Bohrer/AP/Shutterstock

We move north as far as we can to take a look at why some Alaskans want to 86 their governor, a Republican named Mike Dunleavy. He ran a kind of a bait-and-switch to get elected, and now some Alaskans want to throw the bait at him and switch him out for someone else. At root is the check that every Alaskan gets as part of the state’s massive oil revenues. From The New Yorker:



But four years ago, after a precipitous decline in oil prices, the previous governor, an independent named Bill Walker, reduced the P.F.D. as part of an effort to close the growing budget deficit. It was an unprecedented—and deeply unpopular—move, which doomed his chances for a second term. “I don’t want to say it’s a political death sentence,” Larry Persily, a former deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue, told me. “But you could have taken their firstborn and had more of a chance of reëlection.”



So along comes Dunleavy, who promises to restore all of the FREE MONEY! that Walker cut without making any cuts to things like public services and public universities. You don’t have to be Arthur Laffer to see where this was headed.



Once in office, he launched a dramatic assault on the state’s public sector. A year ago, his administration announced a budget proposal that included the restored dividend—about three thousand dollars—but not the retroactive amount, which was paid for by more than a billion dollars in cuts. It reduced funding by more than forty per cent for the University of Alaska system and by three hundred million dollars for the state’s Department of Education. Safety-net cuts included a ninety-per-cent reduction for homeless services, a decrease for Medicaid of more than a third, and the elimination of programs such as adult Medicaid dental benefits, cash assistance to the elderly poor, and public assistance to Alaskans who are blind or have disabilities. A number of essential services were also gutted, including the Alaska Marine Highway System, a network of ferries that provides a transportation lifeline to dozens of coastal communities unconnected to the state’s road system.



Believe me. I’ve been to the barrier islands in the Chukchi Sea. You can get stranded there.



In the town of Cordova, ferries took residents and their vehicles across the sound to Whittier, a ninety-minute drive from Anchorage, where they could stock up on groceries, see doctors, and visit family and friends. As a result of Dunleavy’s budget cuts to the Marine Highway System, the ferries have stopped running and residents are now trapped in Cordova until spring, unless they can afford a ticket on the daily flight to Anchorage, which typically costs around four hundred dollars round trip. “The loss of the ferry,” Clay Koplin, Cordova’s mayor, told me, “may be the slow death of our community.”



Dunleavy, it should be noted, got started in Alaska politics by getting elected to the school board in Wasilla. And just between you, me, and network TV, I think Wasilla had already contributed enough to American politics before Dunleavy got elected governor.



Former Governor Bill Walker made the mistake of cutting off the FREE MONEY! MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Dust Monitor Friedman of the Plains brings us the latest in that state’s attempt to self-quarantine from the 20th and 21st centuries. From KFOR4 in Oklahoma City:



House Bill 3873, authored by Rep. Jason Dunnington, would have prohibited minors under the age of 16-years-old from getting married. If they were 16-years-old or 17-years-old and wanted to get married, they would have to be emancipated first. Right now, teens who are 16-years-old can get married with the consent of a parent, legal guardian, or a court. Those younger than that must have court approval. Lawmakers against the bill said it would take parental input out of the situation. Dunnington responded on Twitter by saying, “Just when I think the #okleg is poised to pass common-sense legislation. In this case my bill HB3873 that would end the practice of child marriage in Oklahoma. Yes, you read that correctly CHILD Marriage. We revert back to the 19th century and it fails 60-35. #facepalm.”

By the way, statistics show that Oklahoma is only ranked fourth among the 50 states in child marriages.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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