Made to Fail

In Florida, the online unemployment system is not working. Interface glitches, missing support services, hold music heard ad nauseum … this is all to be expected from Florida’s CONNECT system. Today, some Floridians still haven’t seen a single penny in benefits. Now, the governor has called for an investigation into the system’s initial contract and has admitted publicly that the system may have been designed to discourage users from, well, using it. After a deep dive into the history of the state’s attitude towards federal unemployment as a whole, it’s clear that there’s more going on in Florida than just a faulty computer system.

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On April 7th, 2020, the voters of Wisconsin lined up to cast their ballots in the Democratic primary election. They lined up in masks and in gloves. They lined up out the door of the polling places, and down the block, and tried throughout the day to keep their distance from one another. Because Republican state lawmakers refused to push back the election, the voters of Wisconsin were forced to turn out in the middle of the pandemic. They were forced to make a choice between their right to vote and their right to live. But those lawmakers weren’t working alone. Indeed, this effort was ultimately enabled by twenty years of voter suppression handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. In case after case, the Supreme Court has hollowed out voting rights in America, making in-person voting during a pandemic election not only possible, but inevitable.

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On March 11, 2019 a crowd of reporters gathered at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to cover the announcement of the site of the Democratic National Convention. Over a year later, the United States has become paralyzed by the novel coronavirus as our institutions are being pushed to their breaking point. As our nation grapples with an out of control pandemic, the greatest recession in living memory, and a national reckoning on race, the question remains...what’s the way out? This is Made to Fail.

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This crisis wasn't an accident. Listen to Made to Fail on August 17th.

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