Tag: State Politics

Closing Thought–06Sep22

Looks like my state of Mississippi has become a trend setter….and not in a good way…..keep in ind Mississippi gave us the overturning of Roe…..and now reinforced the Jim Crow law….in case you missed it….

Mississippi Does It Again!

Appears another Southern state has jumped on the bandwagon….Florida (go figure)…..

Some 130 years ago, white lawmakers gathered in Jackson, Tallahassee, Richmond and other state capitals across the former Confederacy and rewrote their state constitutions to enshrine white supremacy.

Over the last week, Mississippi and Florida have offered modern-day examples of Jim Crow-era voter suppression that endures to this day — enacted by state legislatures, enabled by governors with White House ambitions and enforced by federal judges — and that continues to keep hundreds of thousands of citizens, disproportionately Black, from the polls.

Felony disenfranchisement, along with poll taxes, literacy tests and byzantine voter registration procedures, was among the most effective tools used by racist Southern legislators to effectively nullify the Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution across the old Confederacy and prevent Black citizens from actually exercising their supposed new rights. Lawmakers turned crimes they believed most likely to be committed by poor Black people — such as petty theft, burglary and forgery — into felonies, and then then stripped anyone convicted of those crimes from casting a ballot.

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/03/jim-crow-lives-again-florida-and-mississippi-turn-back-the-clock-on-voting-rights/

And the trend begins.

Which state will be the next to join the rush to eliminate voters?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mississippi Makes The News–Again

Why is it that my state, Mississippi, cannot make the news for something positive….instead it keeps dragging the state back to the 1950s. The latest ruling does nothing to change that opinion.

According to the Mississippi Free Press, the traditionally right-wing U.S. Appeals Court for the Fifth Circuit has upheld an 1890 voting law in Mississippi that was explicitly designed to make it easy to strip Black people of their voting rights for life — even as the court admitted that was the original purpose of the law.

“The court’s conservative majority admitted that the Jim Crow law was ‘steeped in racism,’ but said the State had made enough changes in the 132 years since to override its white supremacist taint,” reported Ashton Pittman. “A 2018 analysis found that the law still disproportionately disenfranchises Black Mississippians compared to white residents.”

“The 1890 provision at issue is Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution, which originally permanently disenfranchised people who committed the following crimes: bribery, burglary, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement and bigamy,” noted the report.

These are all crimes that were disproportionately, or in some cases almost exclusively, used to prosecute Black people, many of whom hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

In their effort to only include crimes they believed Black people were most likely to commit, the white-supremacist drafters of the 1890 Constitution did not originally include murder and rape as disenfranchising crimes,” the report noted.

As the report noted, the Mississippi legislature adopted race neutral language in the law — something that, contrary to popular belief, a lot of Jim Crow laws of the era did — but the drafters of the law made clear in speeches what the law was for. Mississippi Speaker of the House James Vardaman said: “There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter … Mississippi’s constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the n–ger from politics. Not the ‘ignorant and vicious’, as some of the apologists would have you believe, but the n–ger.”

The Fifth Circuit argued that since the list of crimes was later updated, with burglary being taken out and murder and rape being added, there was no longer a racial intent in the list of crimes, and therefore it was now allowed — even though the state still firmly had a segregationist code at the time that list was amended.

https://www.rawstory.com/jim-crow-mississippi/

There may be a ‘New South’ but Mississippi is not one of them…..I have always said when visiting Mississippi then set your watch back 150 years.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Mississippi Is ‘Famous’

By now the whole country has heard of the landmark court case on Roe v Wade…..but did you know that it originated in my state of Mississippi?

And that is not the only ‘famous’ court decision that originated in Mississippi…..25 years ago the landmark tobacco settlement originated in Mississippi.

Yep time for that short trip into history.

If Mississippi’s political leaders had stuck to their plan, the state would now have a trust fund of more than $4 billion earning about $320 million annually to spend on health care, based on projections made in 1999.

But, as often is pointed out, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Such is the case with the health care trust fund that was created in 1999 with the money from the state’s settlement with the tobacco companies of a landmark lawsuit to collect government funds spent treating smoking-related illnesses.

The settlement funds have been delivered to Mississippi as promised, but the promise of a trust fund was broken long ago.

The lawsuit, which originated in Mississippi, turned into a $365 billion national settlement that was announced by then-Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore and others on June 20, 1997 – 25 years ago.

The lawsuit guaranteed Mississippi $4 billion over 25-years with annual payments of $100 million or more, based on a formula, continuing forever.

https://mississippitoday.org/2022/06/26/landmark-tobacco-lawsuit-settled-25-years-ago-what-happened-to-money/

The new cash was earmarked for health issues….but since the GOP runs this state and their push to cut spending the state Congress has been hitting the fund to plug all the holes that they have created by all the austerity measures.

This is typical for Mississippi…they lie.

Like casino tax money was earmarked for education and yet the state education system sucks because there is little money.

Do you pay attention to how your tax dollars are spent?  Or do you just care about issues that mean little to the people of your state?

I can wait for the answers.

Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scrfibo”

More On Uvalde

After the disastrous response by the Uvalde police the news just keep coming….and coming….

The Texas House has proved just how cowardly even the Congress can be….in a hearing about the shootings and death….it seems that parents of the dead are intimidating…..

The family of a child killed in the Uvalde mass shooting was forced to leave a meeting about the massacre after an official complained that they were “intimidated” by them.

Journalists, a local chaplain and the relative of a victim were all asked to leave Uvalde City Hall on Monday afternoon ahead of a closed-door hearing before the Texas House of Representatives, according to CNN.

CNN reporter Shimon Prokupec tweeted that they were removed “because people are intimidated by us”.

“Texas legislators are meeting here with law enforcement behind closed doors,” he tweeted.

“The fire marshal also told a local chaplain and father of a victim to exit from the building.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/uvalde-family-texas-house-meeting-b2106232.html

Seriously?

The parents are not allowed to sit in these meetings to get an explanation why this happened and keeps happening.

Typical Right wing cowardice!

It appears the the school district’s police chief has been sanctioned…..

The Uvalde school district’s police chief was put on leave Wednesday following allegations that he erred in his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School last month. Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell said that he put Pete Arredondo on administrative leave and that another officer would assume the embattled chief’s duties. In a statement, Harrell did not give a reason for removing Arredondo, the AP reports, but he said it remains unclear when district officials will know the outcome of the investigation into the shooting.

Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a state Senate hearing on Tuesday that Arredondo—the on-site commander—made “terrible decisions” as the massacre unfolded on May 24 and that the police response was an “abject failure.” Arredondo has said he didn’t consider himself in charge of the response to the shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed.

This situation continues to unfold and the answers are not showing any competence as law enforcement officers.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Convention Of The States

This is a draft of mine from those dark days before we became fixated on Ukraine…..

Or as we use to call this thing….a Constitutional Convention….

A Convention is the mechanism used to amend our US Constitution……or as some call it exercise the Article Five of the Constitution…..

For those that are ignorant of this article…..

Article V Convention, amendatory convention, or a convention of states, applied for by two-thirds (currently 34) of the state legislatures, is one of two processes authorized by Article Five of the United States Constitution whereby the United States Constitution may be altered. Amendments may also be proposed by Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate…..

Article V of the Constitution says how the Constitution can be amended—that is, how provisions can be added to the text of the Constitution. The Constitution is not easy to amend: only twenty-seven amendments have been added to the Constitution since it was adopted.

Article V spells out a few different ways in which the Constitution can be amended. One method—the one used for every amendment so far—is that Congress proposes an amendment to the states; the states must then decide whether to ratify the amendment. But in order for Congress to propose an amendment, two-thirds of each House of Congress must vote for it. And then three-quarters of the states must ratify the amendment before it is added to the Constitution. So if slightly more than one-third of the House of Representatives, or slightly more than one-third of the Senate, or thirteen out of the fifty states object to a proposal, it will not become an amendment by this route. In that way, a small minority of the country has the ability to prevent an amendment from being added to the Constitution.

Article V does potentially provide a way for the states to bypass Congress, although it has never been used. Article V says that “on the Application of two thirds of the Legislatures of the several States, [Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing amendments.” The convention can propose amendments, whether Congress approves of them or not. Those proposed amendments would then be sent to the states for ratification. As with an amendment proposed by Congress, three-quarters of the states would have to ratify the amendment for it to become part of the Constitution.

Article V also allows Congress to choose between two ways that the states might ratify an amendment. An amendment can be ratified by the state legislature—the part of the state government that enacts laws for the state. But Congress can provide instead that the states must call conventions for the single purpose of deciding whether to ratify an amendment. So far, though, with one exception (the Twenty-First Amendment), every amendment has been ratified by state legislatures.

Now the Civics lesson is over let’s move on…..

The last attempt to ratify was the Equal Rights Amendment…..and that was a clusterf*ck……

I have been saying for decades that we need a convention to clarify the Constitution…..the Founders did a helluva job in being vague which in my mind leads to all the confusion and chaos around our Constitution.

Let me return to the thought of the day……

The latest attempt to ratify is going to be the same chaotic mess as the ERA…..

Conservatives in states have put together a campaign of ratify the Constitution in their favor…..mostly it deals with money……

Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Utah and Mississippi have also approved resolutions of their own.

It will take 34 states to trigger a Convention of the States. COS organizers  said “momentum” is on their side.

For me there are several problems with this attempt by conservs……

Calling a Constitutional Convention is very dangerous. If Congress called a Constitutional Convention, or attempted
to do so, the country would be thrown into great turmoil, a period of extraordinary tension and deep anxiety, and
likely find itself quickly mired in momentous, lengthy legal and political battles of great consequence to the nation’s
future.
 States cannot limit the agenda of a Constitutional Convention. A Constitutional Convention would open up the
Constitution to whatever amendments its delegates chose to propose, just as the convention that produced the current
Constitution ignored its original charge, to amend the Articles of Confederation, and instead wrote an entirely new
governing document.
A balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution would be a highly ill-advised way to address the nation’s longterm fiscal problems. By requiring a balanced budget every year, no matter the state of the economy, such an
amendment would raise serious risks of tipping weak economies into recession and making recessions longer and
deeper, causing very large job losses. That’s because the amendment would force policymakers to cut spending, raise
taxes, or both just when the economy is weak or already in recession — the exact opposite of what good economic
policy would advise.

This is just another attempt to exclude portions of our society from the government….a typical conserv ploy that goes back for decades…..the same trivial games these conservs always play.

I say if you call for a convention then the attempt should be made to clarify all the vagueness in the Constitution….not pick and choose what will be addressed.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–18Feb22

As elections loom large on the horizon we are getting out typical political ads…..some aging white guy with preacher hair and his dutiful wife and 2/3 children in tow telling us all about the future of our state….(most of which is all lies)…..

Then there is a candidate that breaks the rules of polite BS……this one is in Louisiana…..

A Louisiana candidate for the US Senate is making waves with his ads, which show him smoking marijuana and burning the Confederate flag. Baton Rouge community activist Gary Chambers Jr.—who had a viral moment in 2020 when he called out a school board member for online shopping during a discussion about the renaming of a school named after Gen. Robert E. Lee—is running for the seat held by first-term Republican Sen. John Kennedy, per the AP. In an ad released Wednesday, he’s shown hanging a Confederate flag on a clothesline, dousing it in gasoline, and setting it on fire.

“We must burn what remains of the Confederacy down,” Chambers says, condemning a system that’s “producing measurable inequity” for Black people. He adds that gerrymandered election districts are “a byproduct of the Confederacy.” The ad came a day after Chambers rallied at the Louisiana Capitol in support of the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district, which the Senate rejected, per the Daily Advertiser. As a third of the state population is Black, supporters argue two of the state’s six districts should have Black majorities, per the AP. In an earlier ad, viewed 6.6 million times on Twitter, Chambers smoked a marijuana blunt from a wingback chair in a field while dressed in a suit.

The ad was recorded in New Orleans, where there are no longer penalties for possession of small amounts of pot. Marijuana use in Louisiana could lead to jail time, though Chambers says that should change. In the ad, he decried the money wasted on enforcing marijuana laws, adding that arrests disproportionally affect Black people. “Most of the people police are arresting aren’t dealers, but rather people with small amounts of pot. Just like me,” he said. Chambers and fellow Democrat Luke Mixon face an uphill battle in trying to unseat Kennedy. The Republican has almost $10 million in campaign cash, compared to about $170 for Chambers. The latter spent about $400,000 last year in a House race in which he finished strong but lost.

Of course this guy will not win….but at least he is not a cookie cutter image of the guy he is trying to replace.

But watch the ad for yourself….it is unusual and for me memorable…..

If he was running in Mississippi I would vote for him…..but sadly all I can do is watch from afar.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–07Feb22

THe GOP has been brutally honest….well some GOPers…..that all their attempts to limit Dem voters is their strategy…..gerrymandering, voters suppression, etc etc are all attempts to remove any GOP opponents from ever winning another election.

Arizona (go figure) is just the most recent attempts……

Arizona Republicans have spent the past couple weeks since the legislative session began introducing a red wave of voter suppression measures. House Bill 2596, which dropped Friday, would eliminate all early voting, emergency voting centers, and no-excuse mail-in voting. The latter has existed in Arizona since 1991, so longer than the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The House bill would also ban the use of electronic voting machines and require that all ballots are counted by human hands. You might think that would take forever, but they’ll have 24 hours to do it!

Republicans had traditionally held the advantage in ballots cast prior to Election Day. That changed in 2020, so obviously early voting is corrupt and must end. GOP Rep. Shawna Bolick proposed the measure that would only permit emergency voting in “times of war, civil unrest or a natural disaster.” These are obviously the only real emergencies that would prevent someone from voting on Election Day. In real America, emergency voting centers are only for upcoming hurricanes and nuclear wars.

Some of the Republicans who sponsored this bill also reportedly supported and even cheered the Arizona fraudit. A total of seven bills passed out of committee along party lines. State Sen. Wendy Rogers (a QAnon bigot) filed a bill that would prohibit drop boxes with only the most narrow exception for voters with disabilities. Arizonians shouldn’t have to disclose their disability status, and the lack of early voting might make the lines on Election Day a burden even for those who don’t fit Rogers’ likely narrow definition of “disabled.”

https://www.wonkette.com/arizona-gop-officially-done-with-people-voting-against-republicans

This is what we get when the game HALO is more important than voting….the loss of voting rights can be laid only at the feet of the voter.

What will it take to get the lazy toads from behind their game control and vote to preserve our society?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Welcome To Trumpistan

This is what the state of Florida should be known….Trumpistan…..thanx to the authoritarian BS by the governor….De Santis.

The gov and the Repub legislature is giving America a true look at the heart of the GOP

It has been a long and painful month in the Florida legislature for opponents of the state’s Trumpist governor Ron DeSantis and his loyal band of rightwing Republicans. A slew of bills has advanced attacking everything from diversity rights, abortion protections and free speech in schools, in addition to a proposal that would legally shield white people from feeling “discomfort” over the state’s racist past.

And last Wednesday, an anti-masker physician, hand picked by the governor and apathetic about the value of Covid-19 vaccines, was backed unanimously by a Republican senate panel as the next surgeon-general following a walk-out by Democratic politicians frustrated by Joseph Ladapo’s evasiveness.

To hear DeSantis tell it, the “freedom state” of Florida is merely following the will of a populist citizenry in defying the perceived tyranny of the federal government, determined to protect liberty in the face of a deadly pandemic that has claimed more than 64,000 of their fellow residents, and standing up against the “indoctrination” of children.

…

The issues that Republicans see as a priority for Florida are red meat to DeSantis’s conservative base. They include the 15-week abortion ban bill, which received a chaotic hearing on Thursday, and moves to give parents more say over classroom curriculum and control of school libraries. In Polk county this week, education officials went from school to school pulling 16 books flagged by a conservative parents’ group as inappropriate, including Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller The Kite Runner.

They include bills to strengthen the governor’s fierce anti-immigrant stance by locking out from state or local government business any company involved in the transportation of undocumented migrants.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/31/florida-republicans-draconian-bills

Florida is becoming the poster child for authoritarian Repubs in other Red States….

Will the voters allow this screaming trip into chaos continue?

How far will these anti-democratic forces go?

Good question right?

Is Trump and his worshipers trying to destroy democratic rule?

Yes they are!

Hows can this be?

“Citizens do believe what they are hearing and if they hear it long enough and consistently enough and if that’s all they hear, they absolutely don’t think it’s a lie, they think it’s the truth,” Walter said.

“You know, they’re good people,” she added. “They are trying to do what they think is right. It’s the leadership that’s cynical. It’s the leadership that knows better who is feeding them lies consistently. They’re priming their supporters to believe that democracy isn’t worth defending because they don’t want democracy anymore.”

We the voter need to get our collective heads out of our butts and go to the polls on election day and send these political slugs out to pasture.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–21Jan22

Do you feel guilty about anything?

Well in Florida (why is it always Florida) never fear you can be forbidden from making someone feel guilty.

A Florida bill pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel “discomfort” when they teach students or train employees about discrimination in the nation’s past received its first approval Tuesday. The Senate Education Committee backed the bill that takes aim at critical race theory—though it’s not mentioned explicitly—on party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed, the AP reports. Democrats argued the bill isn’t needed, would lead to frivolous lawsuits, and would amount to censorship in schools. They asked, without success, for real-life examples of teachers or businesses telling students or employees that they are racist because of their race.

“This bill’s not for Blacks, this bill was not for any other race. This was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is Black. “At no point did anyone say white people should be held responsible for what happened, but what I would ask my white counterparts is, are you an enabler of what happened or are you going to say we must talk about history?” DeSantis held a news conference last month in which he called critical race theory “crap” and said he would seek legislation that would allow parents to sue schools and employees to sue employers if they were subject to such teachings.

Critical race theory is a way of thinking about US history through the lens of racism. The bill reads in part: “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” Republican Sen. Manny Diaz, the bill’s sponsor, said it is not about ignoring the “dark” parts of American history, but rather ensuring that people are not blamed for sins of the past. The bill now heads to Senate debate, per ABC News.

Just another waste of time by a damn Repub….this does nothing to improve the society and move the state forward…..just another wedge issue to keep the slobbering Right in tow.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mississippi Secedes–1861

This is for all my Civil War history buffs.

My state of Mississippi officially secedes from the Union on 09 January 1861…..I offer up this resolution for their actions on that day….this is the official statement…..

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

That is word for word the declaration for the cessation of the state of Mississippi from the United States……now you tell me what the reason for this was…..it is clear to me no matter what they narrative has become….there was NO ‘Lost Cause’ it was preserve the institution of slavery…..

I offer this up because the schools in the South are failing to teach what lead to the Civil War that killed so many Americans.

In social studies standards for 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, discussion of Reconstruction is “partial” or “non-existent,” according to historians who reviewed how the period is discussed in K-12 social studies standards for public schools nationwide. In a report produced by the education nonprofit Zinn Education Project, the study’s authors say they are concerned that American children will grow up to be uninformed about a critical period of history that helps explain why full racial equality remains unfulfilled today.

https://time.com/6128421/teaching-reconstruction-study/

The history lesson is done….you may now return to your normal drudgery.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”