Tag: State Politics

Closing Thought–07Mar23

My friend Dr. Rex (https://hrexach.wordpress.com/ ) has turned me unto this situation in Florida by the mini dictator DeSantis….he has crapped on individual choice, and books and education and now he is coming for the first amendment in Florida.

Any blogger mentioning Florida’s governor or a state legislator would be required to register with the state under newly proposed legislation experts say would surely violate the First Amendment. Senate Bill 1316 states any person who writes “an article, a story, or a series of stories” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and is paid for their services must register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics within five days of publication. Authors would also need to submit monthly reports describing what posts mention officials, with links; the compensation received; and the individual or entity behind the payment—or face daily fines of $25 up to a maximum of $2,500 per report, per WFLA.

“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register,” reads the bill, per NBC News. It also requires that “bloggers file notices of failure to file a timely report the same way that lobbyists file their disclosures and reports on assessed fines,” per WFLA. The legislation, to take effect immediately upon approval, excludes newspapers or similar publications. It defines a blog as “a website or webpage that hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content”—which may or may not apply to YouTube video bloggers. The bill is authored by Jason Brodeur, a Republican state senator who’s “been the subject of frequent criticism in the media,” per Florida Politics.

“Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers,” Brodeur tells Florida Politics. “If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?” Yet “it’s hard to imagine a proposal that would be more violative of the First Amendment,” Ron Kuby, a First Amendment lawyer, tells NBC. Brodeur has authored other bills experts say would be unconstitutional if passed. One would prevent journalists from shielding the identity of anonymous sources if sued and automatically presume information from such sources to be false, the Orlando Sentinel reports. It “empowers the rich and powerful to basically go after people who say things they don’t like,” Bobby Block of the Florida First Amendment Foundation tells the outlet.

All he needs now is to start wear some sort of uniform and his ‘style’ will be made.

If he is successful this may go to the Supreme Court…..and we know how those political hacks work….don’t we?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–28Feb23

Is DeSantis coming after Disney World?

The governor of Florida has taking control over the state’s institutions….he has come after individual rights,  books, education, even dogs and now he is after Disney…..”the happiest place on earth”…. but for how long?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday savored his victory over the Walt Disney Co., selecting new members of a governing board under legislation he sought after the company objected to a parental rights bill he favored last year. “Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” the Republican said at a Reedy Creek fire station in Lake Buena Vista, CNN reports. “There’s a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.” The governor announced his replacements for the board, who require state Senate approval. They include DeSantis supporters such as conservative activists, a major Republican donor, and the spouse of the new chairman of the state GOP. DeSantis said the board is scheduled to meet next week, “so buckle up.”

Under the bill DeSantis signed on Monday, the board members will oversee infrastructure, services, and taxing authority for the special district that reigns over Disney’s theme parks in central Florida—clout that had belonged to the company. DeSantis hinted at exerting control over Disney’s content as well, per Deadline. “I think that all of these board members very much would like to see the type of entertainment that all families can appreciate,” he said. Members of both parties have been critical of DeSantis’ move. “Disney stepped into the fray. They lost,” former Vice President Mike Pence said last week. “But the idea of going after their taxing authority, that was beyond the scope of what I as a conservative limited government Republican would be prepared to do.”

DeSantis has become the very embodiment of the word authoritarian.

What other targets are in his demonic sights?

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Repubs Show Their True Colors

You heard and even may have voted for the GOP because of those lame promises and now there are a few incidents in state legislatures that show the true colors of the policies of the Republicans.

Take Missouri for an example.

Legislators in the Missouri House of Representatives sparred on Wednesday over a Republican amendment to regulate what types of clothing women lawmakers should be permitted to wear while at work.

House Resolution 11 was cleared by the GOP-dominated Consent and House Procedure Committee. And while it has not yet been submitted to the Missouri State Senate, passionate arguments have burbled from assemblymembers on both sides of the political aisle.

State Representative Raychel Proudie (D-53rd District), for example, lambasted the proposal as inherently absurd, overtly sexist, and unworthy of consideration:

I want you all to pay particular attention, because there’s going to be times on this floor where there are things that should not require debate and comment. I contend that these are one of these things. There are times to have your name said, to be recognized, to be called upon. This is not one of those things. There are some very serious things that are in this rule package that I think we should be debating, but instead, we are fighting again for women’s right to choose something. And this time is how she covers herself and the interpretation of someone who has no background in fashion, because – again, this isn’t a shot – it’s inappropriate to wear sequins before five o’clock telling me that I can’t wear a crispy, good St. John sweater if it has too many buttons. I spend $1200 on a suit, and I can’t wear it in the people’s House because someone who doesn’t have the range tells me that it’s inappropriate.

https://www.alternet.org/you-brought-this-floor-lady/

Typical example of the backwards thinking of the GOP.

Let’s move on to North Carolina….

It’s been almost seven years since North Carolina Republican lawmakers and then-Gov. Pat McCrory hastily concocted and enacted House Bill 2 – the infamous “bathroom bill.” It targeted transgender people for ignorant, mean-spirited and altogether absurd discrimination, while simultaneously making the state the target of numerous boycotts and countless late-night TV one-liners.

The bill was later repealed but its legacy – as an embarrassment to be forgotten as quickly as possible for most people, and as a proud rallying point for the state’s religious right fringe (and reactionary culture warriors everywhere), lingers on. Across the country, efforts to make life harder for transgender people, and even to criminalize efforts to provide them medically necessary healthcare, continue apace. North Carolina state Treasurer Dale Folwell has been an especially avid and energetic devotee of this brand of discrimination.

Now, however, one of the chief architects of the HB 2 disaster, state House Speaker Tim Moore, is back with a new and very different – but equally absurd – kind of bathroom bill, or to be more precise, bathroom rule. And this one too appears to have been fueled by the never-sated demands of right-wing social crusaders.

https://www.rawstory.com/north-carolina-bathroom-bill/

More insanity instead of reality….

Then there is the idiot in New Jersey and his view on books….

A freshman lawmaker from Wyoming has already begun efforts to remove LGBTQ+ books for youth from both school and public libraries in the state.

Republican Rep.-elect Jeanette Ward has introduced House Bill 87, which expands the definition of “child pornography” to mean “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, cartoon, drawing, computer or computer generated image or picture, whether or not made or produced by electronic, mechanical or other means, or any other form of depiction of explicit sexual conduct.”

The bill also repeals a law that gives exemptions for those who “possess or disseminate obscene material” for activities related to schools, universities, colleges, museums, and public libraries.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/01/republican-wants-expand-definition-child-pornography-make-easier-ban-lgbtq-books/

My final report is from Texas (go figure)….

A Texas Republican wants to make foods containing material from aborted human fetuses “clearly and conspicuously labeled” — even though such products do not exist.

The proposed law, authored by state Sen. Bob Hall, says food and medicine would have to be labeled if it contained or was manufactured with human fetal tissue or if it was the product of research that used such tissue. The bill defines human fetal tissue as “tissue, cells, or organs obtained from an aborted unborn child.”

“Unfortunately, many Texans are unknowingly consuming products that either contain human fetal parts or were developed using human fetal parts,” read a statement from Hall’s office. “While some may not be bothered by this, there are many Texans with religious or moral beliefs that would oppose consumption or use of these products.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not allow the sale of foods containing human tissue.

“There are no conditions under which the FDA would consider human fetal tissue to be safe or legal for human or animal consumption,” an agency spokesperson wrote in an email to HuffPost.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-republican-wants-food-made-of-aborted-fetuses-labeled_n_63c7232ae4b07c0c7df8904b

Another one of those lame ass conspiracies that only an idiot would embrace….but then this country is full of those types.

As you can see these have nothing to do with the promises made….and yet they are re-electable….what?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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”