COVID-19 threatens to rip apart Southern states in a way that isn't happening anywhere else

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has still not provided any statewide guidance, leaving such decisions to cities and counties. The same thing applies in Alabama, where Republican Gov. Kay Ivey sniffed that her state is “not California” and declared that she’s not ready to take an action that might hurt the economy. In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has left even state legislators and Republican officials frustrated by his unwillingness to do more than issue recommendations without any force of law. And Arkansas now enjoys a position that may be unique in the nation: Not only has Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson refused to set any level of suppression across the state, but there are also no city or county stay-at-home orders. Arkansas is open for business. And virus transmission.

But there’s another reason that the red states are also “red states” when it comes to their travel distance. As former Obama White House official Christopher Hale points out, these maps correspond closely to areas that are “food deserts,” where the nearest grocery story requires making an extended trip. “Food deserts” is a term that is often applied to urban neighborhoods where good nutrition is outside of walking range, but these are counties where it takes an extended auto trip to find any kind of nutrition, even bad nutrition. Why? The simple answer is Walmart. These areas represent locations where big box retailers like Walmart have annihilated local grocers, and where the quest for an apple or a box of Pop-Tarts means crossing the county to a store that also sells tires, televisions, and potting soil.

It’s also not at all coincidental that the states with the most Fox News viewers are those likely to have Republican governors, and those least likely to have stay-at-home orders, and those most likely to live in food deserts. It’s all of a piece: poor, rural, conservative, and forced to travel even in the midst of a pandemic because that’s the system they’ve been left with.

The Funniest Things Left On Grocery Store Shelves Right Now | HuffPost Life

• “Our city has two enormous international markets. Both have a ‘regular grocery store’ section and then massive international sections organized by country. Regular grocery store section is cleaned out of pasta, rice, etc. The Italy section is fully stocked with pasta.” ― Christine Muller-Held
• “One can of soup: cream of bacon. I didn’t even know it existed.” ― Pam Jefford Folsom

The Funniest Things Left On Grocery Store Shelves Right Now

Everyone is looking to stock up during the coronavirus pandemic. Some supermarket store items are clearly more essential than others. (Even in a crisis,...

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Stimulus package provides USPS no funding, postal service could shutter by June 2020 amid coronavirus | Fortune

With a negative net worth of $65 billion and an additional $140 billion in unfunded liabilities, the USPS originally expected to run out of liquidity by 2021 without intervention. That has accelerated rapidly because of COVID-19. Fewer people and businesses are sending mail because of the outbreak, which could hasten the decline of the Postal Service and close its doors as early as June, officials warned.

While package delivery has increased during the crisis, “revenue growth in our package business will never be enough to offset imbalances in the Postal Service’s business model,” said Postmaster General and CEO Megan Brennan in November.

But the USPS has also been hemorrhaging money, largely owing to a piece of 2006 legislation, championed by the George W. Bush administration and congressional Republicans, that requires the Postal Service to pre-fund all future retiree health benefits, amounting to at least $5.5 billion annually. That edict, according to Brennan, has led to 80% of the agency’s losses. As a result of the lack of revenue, the Trump administration has suggested on multiple occasions that parts of the postal service be sold to private industry.

While the post office has not been funded by taxpayer dollars since the early 1980s, some in Congress—on both the left and the right—pushed for a bailout of the Postal Service as part of the recently passed $2 trillion stimulus package, the largest relief package in U.S. history. The original House bill included a $25 billion appropriation intended to help fund the agency and eliminate its $11 billion in outstanding debt. The measure would also eliminate the USPS’s $3 billion annual borrowing cap.

While the plan passed through the House, the Republican-majority Senate rejected the funding, and the final bill, signed by the President on Friday, only granted the USPS access to a $10 billion Treasury loan—no direct cash.