Fresh Hell

A Plague on Your Houses

Last Saturday, the nation’s eviction ban was allowed to expire, putting some 3.6 million people living in the richest nation in the history of the world at imminent risk of becoming homeless all because—according to the Biden administration’s entirely sound logic—the Supreme Court might possibly at some point in the future decide that preventing 3.6 million people from becoming homeless is unconstitutional. President Biden instead suggested that Nancy Pelosi, who was preoccupied herself with watering down an already watered-down infrastructure package, do something about it. Or maybe the states? Meanwhile, gleeful landlords across the nation giddied up for the return of the good old days when they could, like proper and respectable businessmen, throw a tenant’s entire life out onto the street because they failed to fork over a needlessly inflated sum for their rented domicile. Being respectable businessmen, they and the swollen police forces backing them up were worried about getting the coronavirus themselves in the process of unhousing people during the ongoing pandemic. Thankfully, New Orleans decided they would require all officers conducting evictions to be vaccinated ahead of a “heavy eviction workload.” Oh, but what’s that? There is, after several days of hemming and hawing, a new, more-limited eviction moratorium in effect in parts of the country experiencing what the CDC describes as “substantial” and “high” spread of the coronavirus? Wonderful. As of this writing, that’s the overwhelming majority of the United States!

Get a Grip on Your Student Debt with This One Weird Trick

For those concerned that the most powerful elected woman in the federal government has spent all of her time diluting the aforementioned infrastructure bill with “bipartisan compromise,” worry not: Nancy Pelosi has also taken the time to, as part of her plan to lose the midterm elections, come out in opposition to student debt cancellation, thereby ensuring that we, the indebted populace, will be forced to spend the rest of our lives reading in the pages of Business Insider inspiring tales such as this one, about a woman who used the $23,000 she got as part of insurance settlement after a shower door permanently mutilated her hands to pay off her student debt—and she couldn’t be happier about it!

Time’s Up, Cuomo!

Elsewhere in government, New York’s beleaguered leader Andrew Cuomo spent Thursday afternoon lounging poolside at the executive mansion in Albany while the sexual harassment scandal that may finally be his undoing churned around him. He all but certainly longing for the days when, for a moment, people were only mad at him about the thousands of unnecessary nursing home deaths he was responsible for at the outset of the pandemic. Of course, the governor has not been weathering this storm of sexual assault allegations alone: as it turns out, individuals who work for the Human Rights Campaign and the #MeToo Movement organization Time’s Up dispensed plenty of advice to Cuomo as he sought to discredit one of his accusers. 

Endangered Pigs

Some two hundred miles south of the embattled governor’s mansion, on Long Island, the Democrats of Nassau County have proposed an exciting new law that would enable police officers to seek damages against protesters for “discrimination.” It’s clear that everything in the state of New York is working well.

Maskhole

To Arkansas now, where that state’s Republican governor, months after signing into law a bill banning any present or future mask mandates, has had a change of heart: Asa Hutchinson regrets it! “In hindsight,” he lamented, amid a surge in cases and hospitalizations, “I wish that it had not become law. But it is the law, and the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to say that it has an unconstitutional foundation.” But just because Hutchinson may feel bad about a little unnecessary death does not, of course, mean he’s now in favor of a statewide mask mandate. 

Enjoy the End of Days in Style

Scientists reported this week that the Gulf Stream, which helps regulate the rain on which billions of people depend for food, is showing signs of collapse, which is certainly a promising sign for our prospects as a civilization. While the rest of us boil in the rising seas, firing off irony-poisoned commentary into the content stream until the internet flickers out, a select few extremely rich people will be circling the globe in their own personal Snowpiercer: a $300 million private train envisioned by the guy who designed Steve Jobs’s yacht! Click here to see garish renderings of rich people enjoying a glass of champagne on the train’s terrace while the world burns!