What Happened Today: March 11, 2021

Your preview of The Scroll is ending, click link inside to subscribe [This exclusive preview of The Scroll ends tomorrow. Want to keep getting it? Click here to subscribe.]( March 11, 2021 THE BIG STORY A digital JPG file sold for $69.3 million (with fees) at a Christie’s auction Thursday—the highest sale on record for a digital work of art. The piece, by an artist known as Beeple, was sold as a nonfungible token, or NFT, which is not the image of the art—that can be found for free online—but the unique information encoded on the blockchain that represents ownership of the image and cannot be copied. It’s art in the age of digital nonreproduction. The high-art world seems to have little interest in those of us who value art for how it makes us feel and what it allows us to imagine, and the internet has sped up a process that’s been underway for decades, of art collectors becoming more like Wall Street derivatives traders. British artist Damien Hirst sold a shark preserved in formaldehyde for an estimated $8 million to $12 million in 2004, when the internet was just getting going. But the internet, in theory at least, also means that artists who aren’t in it to make millions no longer need collectors to reach an audience. THE REST - A large majority of American parents—79%—want schools to reopen, a new Gallup poll shows. The strong support crosses political party, work status and regional lines. - A journalist for the Des Moines Register named Andrea Sahouri was acquitted after having been ludicrously charged with "interference with official acts." The crime? She was arrested for covering protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. The ruling is a win for anyone who still cares about civil liberties, which these days includes fewer journalists than you might think. - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his first official visit to the UAE since the two countries normalized relations in September. This is the fourth time he's canceled a visit, in this case citing a dispute with Jordan about his plane being allowed to fly through the country’s airspace. - New York City's largest public employee union, District Council 37, is expected to endorse Eric Adams for mayor. This is the second major union to endorse the former cop and current Brooklyn borough president, after the Hotel Trades Council announced its support for Adams last week. - Mexico is set to legalize recreational marijuana, a significant move given the country's devastating and ongoing drug war. - Only days after having his 2017 corruption convictions annulled, Brazil’s former left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, laid into the current right-wing populist president, Jair Bolsonaro. In a speech Wednesday, Lula denounced Bolsonaro as a blowhard, and called his decisions on COVID “moronic.” A poll taken last week showed 50% of respondents supported Lula, compared with 38% for Bolsonaro. - Last year, 93% of people arrested on marijuana charges in New York City were Black or Hispanic, while white residents accounted for less than 5% of arrests, according to a new analysis by the Legal Aid Society. - America Reopening: Add New Jersey to the list of states resuming a semblance of normalcy: Gov. Philip Murphy announced Wednesday that restaurants, gyms and other indoor facilities could reopen at half capacity next week. - 30,000 YouTube videos have been taken down since October, the company announced Thursday. Videos deemed “misinformation” were removed for contradicting local health authorities or the World Health Organization—the same WHO that at various points in the past year opposed wearing masks and travel bans, and that has asserted that the virus is highly contagious. Maybe Google, YouTube’s parent company, should have a more skeptical, scientific attitude toward its trusted authorities. - Steven Spielberg is directing a movie based on his childhood in Arizona. Spielberg will co-write it with Tony Kushner, his collaborator on “Munich” and “Lincoln.” The film will be released in 2022, according to Deadline. No word yet on who will play Spielberg. - Merrick Garland was confirmed as attorney general yesterday by a Senate vote of 70-30. Setting the tone for his tenure as AG, Garland said his top priority would be to “supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol,” referring to the January 6th melee that involved fewer than 1,000 rioters. - Making the most of their slim majority in the House, Democrats passed two gun-control bills Thursday. One expands background checks to guns purchased on the internet, while the other ups the window for background checks to 10 days from three. - The patio chairs used in Oprah Winfrey’s blockbuster interview about the trials of celebrity royal couple Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have sold out across the internet. The Christopher Knight Home Burchett collection chairs go for $554 a pair. The Story Behind the Story Trying to make sense of something as big as the $2 trillion bill signed into law yesterday by President Biden isn’t easy. The bill combines some targeted COVID relief measures with much broader stimulus spending. Democrats are calling it "[the furthest-reaching social welfare bill since the Great Depression]( and touting it as a reversal of Clinton-era welfare reforms. But rather than pontificate about a bill I haven’t even begun to read, I turned to two people whose politics differ but who share insight into the real-world effects of government policies. [Joel Kotkin]( is a demographer, Tablet contributor and the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University; Michael Tomasky is the editor of [Democracy: A Journal of Ideas]( and a special correspondent for The Daily Beast. Kotkin: Helping people and businesses in need is a great idea. But much of this stimulus is really pork-barrel spending on steroids—aimed to put money into the electorate’s hands, whether needed or not. One friend with two million in bank, a healthy investment income and a fully owned house got the same as someone who is actually poor. We may be creating the basis, and expectation, for a welfare state of unprecedented proportions. It would have been far better to focus help on these really in need. What America needs is more good-paying jobs so people can support themselves; stimulus for the long-term good should be at the center of economic policy, not gross vote-buying and dependency-extending. Tomasky: Let me speak of two categories of impacts, economic and political. The economic impacts on the working-class labor force will be both momentous and numerous, from things people see (the cash payments) to things they won't so readily see (the dollars in the bill that will improve their children's school systems, the mass transit they ride to work, the rural hospitals they rely on, etc.). The political impact, I hope, will be that working-class people will see that maybe the government is not their enemy. Unlike some liberals, I'm not ready to spike the football in the end zone of supply-side economics' grave just yet. But this is one hell of a start. Copyright © 2021 Tablet Magazine, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website, www.tabletmag.com. Our mailing address is: Tablet Magazine P.O. Box 20079New York, NY 10001 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](