Libraries Face Political Pressure

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Mansfield, Stowe, VT – February 2024 photo by Micheline Lemay

“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”  – Frank Zappa

Rebecca Gordon has an article at Salon about the growing attacks on public libraries by America’s Right:

“You might think that an apparently harmless public good like a library would have no enemies. But in the age of Trump…there turn out to be many. Some are “astroturf” outfits like the not-even-a-little-bit-ironically named Moms for Liberty. M4L, as they abbreviate their name, was founded in 2021 in Florida, originally to challenge Covid-era mask mandates in public schools. They’ve since expanded their definition of “liberty” to include pursuing the creation of public school libraries that are free of any mention of the existence of LGBTQ people, gender variations, sex, or racism.”

M4L supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2022 and 2023 “Don’t Say Gay” laws, which outlaw any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools, while making it extremely easy for parents or other citizens to demand the removal of books they find objectionable from school libraries.

Copycat laws have since been passed in multiple states, including Tennessee where a school district banned MAUS, the bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum, thanks to eight (now-forbidden) words and a drawing of a naked mouse.

One Florida school district went further. According to CBS News, it also banned:

“Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary…‘The Bible Book,’ ‘The World Book Encyclopedia of People and Places,’ ‘Guinness Book of World Records, 2000,’ ‘Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus for Students,’ and ‘The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary.’”

You never know what is lurking in a dictionary that might turn your kid gay.

Contemporary book-banning efforts now extend beyond school libraries, where reasonable people might differ about which books should be available to children, to public libraries, where book banners are seeking to keep adults from reading whatever they choose.

EveryLibrary, an anti-censorship organization, keeps a running total of legislation that is concerning in state legislatures that relates to controlling libraries and their librarians. Their current list of such bills, highlights 93 pieces of legislation moving through legislatures in 24 states.

More from Gordon:

“In 2024, they are focusing on…issues, including bills that would criminalize libraries, education, and museums (and/or the employees therein) by removing long-standing defense from prosecution exemptions under obscenity laws….In addition…they are focusing on potential legislation that could restrict the freedom of libraries to develop their collections as they wish, as well as bills that would defund or close public libraries altogether.”

Legislation pending in Oklahoma, the “Opposition to Marxism and Defense of Oklahoma Children Act of 2024”, isn’t concerned with removing books from Oklahoma’s libraries. It focuses on the American Library Association (ALA), which promotes and supports librarians. One of the ALA’s most important activities is the accreditation of library schools, where future librarians learn their craft.

Oklahoma’s “Opposition to Marxism Act” would outlaw cooperation with the ALA, including an existing requirement that public librarians have degrees from ALA-accredited library schools. This form of “opposing Marxism” means taking down a professional organization for librarians along with its Oklahoma affiliate. Gordon thinks this is because of the ALA’s support for “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,” (DEI) which MAGA’s are sure is code for Marxism.

Some history: Free public libraries first appeared in this country in the early 1800s. It’s generally agreed that the first dedicated, municipally funded public library in the world opened in 1833 in Peterborough, New Hampshire. A century earlier, Benjamin Franklin had founded the Philadelphia Library Company, a private, subscription-based outfit, funded by members who paid annual dues.

Public libraries as we know them might never have existed if it weren’t for Andrew Carnegie, the obscenely rich robber baron. He funded the building of more than 2,500 libraries worldwide, including some 1,700 in the US built between 1886 and 1929.

According to the ALA, there are 33,855 public libraries in the US along with 82,300 public school libraries

Back to today, Pen America, an organization that works to ensure that people have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access those views, keeps a running total of book bans in public schools. We do not have similar totals for bans in public libraries.

Between July and December 2022, instances of individual book bans occurred in 66 school districts in 21 states. PEN America recorded 13 districts in Florida banning books, followed by 12 districts in Missouri, 7 districts in Texas, and 5 districts in both South Carolina and Michigan. Texas districts had the most instances of book bans with 438 bans, followed by 357 bans in Florida, 315 bans in Missouri, and over 100 bans in both Utah and South Carolina:

So far this school year, instances of book bans were concentrated in a few states – Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. Frisco Independent School District in Texas, Wentzville School District in Missouri, and Escambia County Public Schools in Florida together banned over 600 books, whereas nationwide, most districts (76%) banned fewer books, between 1 and 19.

A public library should be shelving books that “someone might want to read” whereas a public school library should be shelving those that “we think it would be good for students in this age group to read”.

Since the latter is an actively encouraging role, parents should have more leeway to veto certain selections. Obviously that can easily get out of hand, and vetoes could result in tit for tat countermeasures. For a general public library, the ability of one person or group to veto what all others can read should be much more restricted. The solution we had long ago, in the dark days of Wrongo’s youth, was for material that some people did not deem age-appropriate to be checked out only with parental approval. Perhaps that option is no longer thought to be viable.

The internet age has made libraries vulnerable. People can check out digital books electronically, making the library look for alternative uses of its space. Over time, the library shelves may give way to digital archives of their material, causing another concern for how to use the library space efficiently.

But libraries should remain a neutral source of information for the community. And they should retain their–now quite wide ranging–public service function for as long as they can.

The answer to a bad idea should never be censorship. The answer is to counter it with good, or at least better ideas. Libraries and their communities should respect their patrons’ intelligence, provide them with access to information, and let them think things through for themselves.

Wrongo would rather know about the evil ideas that roam free in the world rather than have that evil proliferating in the dark. As an example, Mein Kampf is widely available, and that’s as it should be.

Otherwise, we may go back to the Dark Ages where most were illiterate and only the elite could read and write.

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Cartoons of the Week – November 19, 2023

Since we couldn’t have a Saturday Soother, Wrongo wants to complain a bit today. But first, it was a bad week for cartoons. Here are the best:

It’s clear that many Americans can’t hold two thoughts simultaneously:

Biden sees through the turkey:

 

 

Complaint #1: We’re faced with a choice between our aging president and his aging contender for the job. Biden did quite well in his meeting with China’s president Xi. He seemingly met all of the American objectives for the meeting. In the press conference afterwards, he looked in command, walking across a minefield of questions, even with the gotcha question about whether Xi was a dictator, without any missteps.

But the press still talks about how old Biden looks. From Kevin Drum: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…having now listened to a number of Biden’s recent speaking gigs, there’s really no question that this [his age] is solely about his physical appearance. Cognitively, Biden is perfectly normal. The worst he ever does is the occasional verbal flub, a longtime Biden habit. Agree with him or not, he says what he means to say….He thinks Xi Jinping is a dictator and has repeated this [even] through the grimaces of his Secretary of State.”

Contrast that with Trump who doesn’t appear to be as old, but can barely remember who the president is, or how many world wars we’ve had. America will either elect a charade of an active former president with a deteriorating mind, or we can keep an active president with a strong mind but obvious physical limitations.

Which would you rather have?

Complaint #2: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he told Americans on Tuesday that our time-honored concept of separation of church and state, a founding principle of the country is a “misunderstanding”, that what the founders really wanted was to stop government interfering with religion, not the other way around:

“The separation of church and state is a misnomer….People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution.”

Johnson was referring to Jefferson’s 1802 letters to the Danbury Baptists Association of Connecticut. In the letters, Jefferson makes clear that the founding fathers subscribed to a powerful separation of church and state, which they enshrined in the establishment clause of the First Amendment (even Johnson knows while the Amendments are technically “not” part of the Constitution, they really are).

It’s no surprise that the same people that believe the Constitution should be strictly interpreted are also trying to force an interpretation of it that allows them to make the bible integral to it. Integration of religion into politics has historically been something that fascists and authoritarians have used to get what they wanted.

Rolling Stone says that Johnson has:

“…a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism…”

More:

“The flag is white with a simple evergreen tree in the center and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top….this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts.”

The quote “An Appeal to Heaven” was taken from John Locke. In the past decade, this flag has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America. Still more:

“…if you look closely at the…videos and pictures of the Capitol insurrection, Appeal to Heaven flags are everywhere. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them…[in]…the crowd…”

An example from Jan. 6:

Rolling Stone has spent months researching this corner of Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). They use the same flag hanging outside Johnson’s office, and it’s a key part of their symbology.

The NAR was formed in the 1990s around an evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. This is a nondenominational network that believes they are the vanguard of a Christian revolution. In the mid-2000s, these NAR networks embraced a theological paradigm called the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a prophecy that divides society into seven arenas — religion, family, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and business.

The “Mandate,” as they understand it, is for Christians to “take dominion” and “conquer” all seven of these sectors and have Christian influence flow down into the rest of society.

Follow along for another minute: One of Wagner’s key disciples is Dutch Sheets. In 2013, Sheets was given an Appeal to Heaven flag. A friend told him that, because it predated the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that “had flown over our nation at its birthing.” Sheets saw the flag as a symbol of the spiritual warfare-driven Christian nationalist revolution he hoped to bring about in American politics.

Sheets endorsed Trump’s candidacy and over the course of the 2016 campaign, the Appeal to Heaven flag and the NAR’s vision of a Christianity-dominated America became entwined with Trump.

Why does Johnson fly this symbol of Christian warfare at the House Speaker’s office when it is clear that the spiritual-warfare appropriation of it connotes an aggressive form of Christian nationalism. The Rolling Stone closes by saying:

“It is simply untenable to think that Johnson is unaware of what the Appeal to Heaven flag signals today. It represents an aggressive, spiritual-warfare style of Christian nationalism, and Johnson is a legal insurrectionist who has deeply tied himself into networks of Christian extremists whose rhetoric, leadership, and warfare theology fueled a literal insurrection.”

We The People cannot let the Mike Johnsons of the world take over our country.

When theocrats and fascists tell us who they are, believe them.

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Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYC’s World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the building’s collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.

The above is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.

The 9/11 Memorial’s email today asked this question:

“Did you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?”

Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and who’s now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.

What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who can’t remember it? Maybe that there’s too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.

We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kids’ safety while they’re in school. We worry that if we lose our job we won’t find another one. Some of us worry that we’ll never find the job we’re looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and we’re still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:

  • We’re so angry that we’ve lost much of our social cohesion
  • We aren’t willing to deal with income inequality
  • We’re seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
  • We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

So today’s wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Don’t forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.

Here’s a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York: 

Check out the audience reaction to Joel’s songs. That doesn’t look like fear. That’s where we all need to be today in 2023. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 5, 2023

Not sure who buys their drugs at Walgreen’s but this seems like a bad management decision:

“The nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where they remain legal — acting out of an abundance of caution amid a shifting policy landscape, threats from state officials and pressure from anti-abortion activists.”

It seems that Republican state attorneys general in about 24 states wrote to Walgreens in February, threatening legal action if the company continued distributing the drugs in their states.

These abortion pills are the nation’s most frequently used method for ending a pregnancy.

The company subsequently told the states that it will not dispense abortion pills either by mail or at their brick-and-mortar locations in those states.

This is where America is at: Large corporations are doing more to obstruct access to abortion than the law requires. On to cartoons.

Women’s history month at the Supreme Court:

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the Oscar-nominated movie “Women Talking” last night. It’s message is that women should no longer accept things they cannot change; that it’s time to change the things they can’t accept. Like the Dobbs decision.

Tennessee outlaws drag. And they’re so pro-life that they want to execute any woman who gets an abortion.:

Make facts your weapon:

Disney today:

Dilbert exits:

Jimmy’s with us for a little while longer:

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Monday Wake Up Call – February 20, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Oatman, AZ on Route 66 – February 2023 photo by Laurel Anne Lindsay

Some of you may have heard about a study called “The Hidden Tribes of America” by the group More in Common. It’s trying to understand the forces driving political polarization in America today. They classify the American electorate into seven distinct groups, they call “Tribes”.

But their key conclusion is that most people don’t belong on the far left or far right: (brackets by Wrongo)

“
the largest group that we uncovered in our research has so far been largely overlooked. It is a group of Americans we call the Exhausted Majority…representing a two-thirds majority of Americans, who aren’t part of the Wings….most members of the Exhausted Majority aren’t [simply] political centrists or moderates. On specific issues, their views range across the spectrum.”

More:

“But while they hold a variety of views, the members of the Exhausted Majority are also united in important ways: They are fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society
.. [they] are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely
.. they aren’t ideologues who dismiss as evil or ignorant the people who don’t share their exact political views. They want to talk and to find a path forward.

This chart from the study graphically illustrates the seven tribal groups of the American populace. As you can see, there is a left-wing group that is about 8% of the US population. And there are two right-wing groups that equal about 25% of Americans. That leaves four groups in what the authors call the “Exhausted Majority”. They are 67% of the American populace.

Here are some demographic characteristics of the seven groups:

  • Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
  • Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
  • Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
  • Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic,
  • Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
  • Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.
  • Devoted Conservatives: white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising,

Wrongo identifies as one of the Traditional Liberals, their description rings true.

The authors say that in their research, this tribal membership predicted differences in Americans’ views on various political issues better than demographic, ideological, and partisan groupings. You can read or download the whole study here.

An “Exhausted Majority” may be a positive political development. Wrongo spends nearly every day thinking that there are just two opposing camps. And that they each view each other with fear and loathing, refusing to listen to anything that doesn’t fit their existing narrative. As we’re entering the next presidential campaign, it’s good to know that Wrongo’s view of our polarization might be well, wrong.

Is the “Exhausted Majority” merely a new response to our dysfunctional politics? Wrongo isn’t alone in thinking that what’s wrong with our country will take decades to overcome. Faced with that, people start to look for quick fixes, or a way to stop listening to the wrangling. And you don’t have to be unaligned with either Party to share this sense of exasperation.

The people described in the “Exhausted Majority” are similar. It’s also true that for most people, politics isn’t the be-all-end-all of their lives. They’d prefer that the business of government didn’t require their involvement. They’re trying to get their kids educated, and to keep them safe. They prefer to see political compromise happen without needing to be involved.

But if you can walk away from politics when it frustrates you, then you’re in the lucky minority:

  • There are large numbers of parents who have discovered that their child is addicted to opioids.
  • There are many people who had lost their health insurance when they were laid off.
  • Many sent their daughter to college in the South only to learn that she no longer has any reproductive rights.
  • Many are worried that books are being taken from public school libraries.
  • Some fear that they may lose the right to vote.

These people can’t simply throw up their hands and walk away. Only political action will help them. We all know that the political radicals are irredeemable. We also know they make the most noise, but they’re a minority.

The fed-up people on both sides and in the middle have to find a way to take the country back from the radicals, instead of allowing ourselves to be herded into existing opposing camps.

Time to wake up America! We can’t simply drop out. There’s too much at stake. Democrats need to find candidates and a message that can motivate an additional 5%-15% of the “Exhausted Majority” to vote with them. To help you wake up, watch, and listen to the RedMolly band play a very nice cover of Richard Thompson’s “Vincent Black Lightning 1952”. It’s a surprise how beautifully it adapts to a bluegrass idiom, and the dobro work makes it:

“Vincent Black Lightning” is one of the most perfect songs ever written. We saw Thompson perform it live at Tanglewood last summer.

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Monday Wake Up Call – February 6, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sea smoke, South Portland, ME looking towards Portland Head light – February 2023 photo by Benjamin Williamson Photography

On Saturday, Wrongo and Ms. Right went to a dinner party with friends and two generations of family. The after dinner talk turned to how quite a few of the kids and grandkids weren’t planning on having children.

We tossed around ideas about why they were unlikely to procreate, and somethings stood out. First, they see climate change as an existential threat that society is unwilling to solve, even though the technology already exists. Why bring a kid into that?

Second, society seems broken. Our group meant that we face simultaneous crises, layered on top of each other.  This situation involving simultaneous global challenges, for which we have few solutions, is called Polycrisis.

And a crisis in one global system can spill over into other global systems. They interact with each another so that each new crisis worsens the overall harm. The Polycrisis environment weakens every individual’s sense of security and their place in the world.

One impact that seems related to the simultaneous climate, health, economic and geopolitical challenges are the effects on children. The needs for special education and special services for the very young has never been greater in America. It’s forcing big changes in public school budgets across the country.

No one is really sure why this is happening.

Wrongo isn’t proposing a solution, just suggesting we need to think more about how the problems of declining birth rates, coupled with the growing issues our young children are facing, might be interrelated.

Noah Smith an economist, has an interesting newsletter about how we define community:

“In the past, our communities were primarily horizontal — they were simply the people we lived close to….Increasingly, though, new technology has enabled us to construct communities that I’ve decided to call vertical — groups of people united by identities, interests, and values rather than by physical proximity.”

Smith says that in the past few decades, Americans became disengaged from their local communities, hunkering down in their houses, and failing to interact with the people around them. That led to a well-documented decline in Americans’ participation in civic organizations, local clubs, etc. Our neighbors can also be stifling and/or repressive because they impose uncomfortable community norms on us.

We’ve always had Smith’s vertical communities: “the Jewish community”, “the LGBT community”, and many others. But in the past, an identity grouping wasn’t a true community. We all have identities that connect us with faraway people — other Irishmen, other Taylor Swift fans.

Prior to the internet, we couldn’t have much contact with them. These loose vertical communities weren’t efficient ways to exchange ideas. Before email, text and streaming video, getting the word out was very slow, and our horizontal communities would decide whether what we wanted to share was worthwhile.

Now, we’re no longer isolated. The internet brought us a world of human interaction: social media feeds, chat apps, and so on. Suddenly we’re surrounded by people through their words, their pictures, and their videos.

Now we organize much of our human interaction around virtual vertical communities. Former occasional connections became Facebook groups, subreddits and personal networks on Twitter. And like our small towns back in the day, vertical communities use social ostracism to punish those who deviate from consensus norms.

But vertical communities can’t provide things like public education, national defense, courts of law, property rights, product standards, and infrastructure that we all depend on.

These require a government to administer them. And governments are organized horizontally; mostly defined by lines on maps. But what if we socialize, cooperate, and fall in love with the people from our vertical community? What if we grow apart from the people next door and the relationship is irreparable?

We see this every day in America when citizens go to a PTA meeting and discover a bunch of strangers saying things that they despise.

Wrongo isn’t saying that vertical communities are another enemy. But they can and do exacerbate the polycrisis by making truth harder to see. And by making effective action more difficult.

If you doubt this, remember how powerful the anti-vaxx vertical was at the height of the Covid pandemic. Today’s vertical communities are strong enough to keep our government from getting much of anything done. How can we work together with neighbors when we share few common bonds?

America today is a predatory society. We predate on politics, ideas, values, and culture. Biden’s trying to change this, but can he succeed? How many of us are trying to help? Changing a society that’s this broken, one that’s moving deeper into vertical communities will be a very heavy lift.

Time to wake up America! What can we do to maintain what Lincoln in his first inaugural address said:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

To help you wake up, listen and watch the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 2022 cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” with Larkin Poe (Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell) on vocals and a fabulous slide guitar solo:

Sample of Lyrics:

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame
All day long I hear him shout so loud
Just crying out that he was framed

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Monday Wake Up Call – November 21, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Early snow, Rockford, MI – November 2022 photo by Jeane Blazic

We’re going to cover two topics on this Monday. First, Bernard L. Fraga, associate professor of Political Science at Emory University, tweeted the demographics of the Georgia midterm election:

Black turnout was down by 4.5% vs 2018. Hispanic turnout was down 2.5%. Had the Black turnout percentage been at 2018 levels, Warnock probably would have won outright. The difference may have been caused in part by the new voting restrictions in Georgia. Wrongo talked last week about helping Georgians get photo IDs. People better wake up and help get more Black Georgians to the polls on December 6.

But today’s main wake up call is about the Rightwing group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Wrongo has written about ALEC before, here, here, here and here. ALEC prepares model legislation that conforms to hard Right ideology. They then meet with state legislators all across America to push for adoption of ALEC-written laws at the state level. These are laws that would probably never become law at the federal level.

In the past, some Republican-led states have passed hundreds of pieces of ALEC’s model legislation almost word for word, including on immigration, voter suppression, the environment, guns, and energy policy.

Now, ALEC is pushing states to adopt a new law shielding US businesses from “political boycotts”. If enacted, the proposed legislation, would prevent boycotts by investors, banks, and companies of any other US business. The guts of the Act is that a governmental entity may not enter into a contract with a company for goods or services unless the contract contains a written verification from the company that it:

  • Does not engage in economic boycotts; and
  • Will not engage in economic boycotts during the term of the contract.

This comes about amid rising consumer pressure on firms over who they support politically, or who they choose to do business with. Think about the decision by major retail stores to stop selling My Pillow products, or the decision by Adidas to cut Kanye West’s shoe line loose after he made anti-Semitic statements.

From The Guardian:

“The new model legislation requires every “governmental entity”, which covers a wide array of bodies from state government to local police departments and public universities, to include a clause in contracts requiring businesses to pledge they “will not engage in economic boycotts”

For most of us, “free markets” means that businesses are free to make buying and selling decisions based on the information that’s relevant to their economic interests. But to enforce this Act, a state Attorney General can decide that the decision to, for example, divest the stock of an oil and gas company, is an ideological act.

What if it’s just not that good of a stock?

ALEC’s doublethink maintains that for free markets to remain free, it is sometimes necessary to restrict the freedom to make certain decisions based on criteria that an Attorney General can define as “ideological.”

Even if they are based on a sound economic rationale.

We knew all along that for the Right Wing, free doesn’t really mean free. These people are authoritarians who want to harness the powers of government for their own ends. And they’ll do whatever’s convenient to achieve those ends.

The Republican establishment is very much alive. ALEC is the right wing’s corporate gangsters in suits. In this case, it’s billionaires aligned with corrupt Republican politicians. They have purchased state and federal legislators to do their bidding. And it’s been going on for a very long time.

Let’s see what the Supreme Court does when one of these cases gets in front of them.

Time to wake up America! The hard right in America is unbelievably well-funded. ALEC is just one of the many ways that they are undermining what true “freedom” means.

To help you wake up, listen to Little Feat, that is, the Lowell George-led version of Little Feat, (not the several incarnations of newer bands using that name that have been working since Lowell died in 1979).

Here Lowell George does “Dixie Chicken”, recorded at London’s Rainbow Theater on August 3 & 4, 1977. It’s from the live album, “Waiting for Columbus”. If you don’t know this album, you should buy the 2002 Deluxe Edition CD. You will never be sorry. Don’t buy the version on Amazon, it only has 20 songs; the actual deluxe CD has 27.

WFC was recorded in London and in Washington DC. There were 4 dates in London and 3 in DC. Here it is:

That’s Bill Payne on the piano solo. Little Feat combines jazz, honkytonk, swing, ragtime and Dixie into one great song. Enjoy!

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More Rights May Be Flushed By The Supremes

The Daily Escape:

Denali from Byers Lake, AK – June 2022 photo by Todd Salat

In his concurring opinion to the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that dismantled Roe, Justice Thomas basically begged Red states to send the Court more culture war cases that they could dismantle.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas GOP AG Ken Paxton is ready to do just that:

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week seemingly expressed support for the Supreme Court potentially overturning past rulings on cases involving the LGBTQ community following the downfall of Roe v. Wade on Friday.”

Paxton, in an interview, said he would support the Supreme Court revisiting the cases mentioned in Thomas’ concurring opinion. Here are the decisions Thomas would like a shot at overturning:

He questioned a number of earlier Court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right of same-sex couples to marry, and Lawrence vs. Texas—a 2003 decision in which the court ruled against the state of Texas regarding its 1973 law criminalizing the act of sodomy.

Thomas also mentioned Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right of married couples to use contraception without government interference:

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell….We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ regarding these established in those precedents.”

For those who don’t fully understand legal shorthand, the judicial theory Thomas is pursuing is that these issues should be in the hands of state legislatures, and not be decided by the courts.

Conservatives in other states have also expressed support for Thomas’s opinion, including Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, who said he would support the Supreme Court reconsidering same-sex marriage. Utah’s constitutional ban on same-sex unions still exists and could be reinstated if the high court were to overturn its earlier decision.

We shouldn’t forget that Obergefell was a 5-4 decision. Lawrence v. Texas was also a 5-4 decision. Since these cases were decided, the Court has moved three seats to the right. We should expect that both of these decisions will be overturned, assuming some state AG sends a case up to the Supremes.

After all, the Court’s Conservatives haven’t gotten more liberal on these issues in the last 10-15 years.

Some more history: Griswold v, Connecticut was decided 7-2, Loving v. Virginia was unanimous; and Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous. All of that said, while history shows that very few 5-4 decisions get overturned, in this time of Conservative Justice grievance, that’s not the way to bet. Even if those cases had been 6-3, 7-2 or 8-1, it wouldn’t matter to the current Justices on the Court.

Pundits are talking as if they would be shocked if the Court reverses Obergefell and Lawrence. That’s because they’re comforted that Thomas’s revolutionary concurrence wasn’t joined by other Justices. But all of them voted to end Roe, and Alito said:

“…abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Therefore, there is no right to an abortion.”

We should also remember that the Court used nearly word for word, the failed Robert Bork’s reasoning why there isn’t a Constitutional right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut.

If there’s no right to privacy because the Constitution does not explicitly state there is such a right, then according to the Court’s Conservative 6, all of the rest of our privacy rights are in play. That means nearly nothing in the Fourth Amendment may remain, because you have no right to privacy in your home or in your vehicle.

But if you bet that the Court’s Conservative majority will somehow find that the founders explicitly wanted corporations to have a right to privacy, you’ll earn some folding money.

The naked desire by the Furious Five to achieve their ideological goals as quickly as possible is most likely, uncontrollable. Chief Justice Roberts is being increasingly sidelined because he wants to (at least) try to hide their ideological agenda. But the Furious Five doesn’t have any interest in hiding what they’re doing.

No more calling “balls and strikes” as Roberts said during his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing.

In closing, the music world has reacted strongly to the Supreme Court ruling on abortion. NPR has a nice roundup of what artists are saying and doing in response. Check it out if you have time.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 26, 2022

(New columns will be light and variable for the next week, since Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending grandson Conor’s wedding in NC. Regular programming will resume on July 6.)

We’re not talking about the Supreme Court or the J6 news this morning. We’ll leave that for the cartoons below. Instead, let’s focus on an enlightening article from Curbed: “Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right?”:

“Hoboken feels downright roomy. Wander down the wide, busy sidewalks of Washington Street, the city’s main strip…and one thing becomes clear….A pedestrian doesn’t have to play the…perilous game of New York City crosswalk chicken, where you squint through the windows of a massive metal box to catch a glimpse of another speeding metal box whose driver doesn’t see you.”

More:

“Few drivers park next to crosswalks in Hoboken because they can’t. Those spots are blocked off with bike racks or planters or storm drains or extra sidewalk space for pedestrians or vertical plastic pylons that deter all but the boldest delivery-truck drivers. Stand at a corner, and you can see what is coming toward you, and drivers can see you too, and you don’t have to step out into the road and risk your life to do it.”

This concept is called Vision Zero, a strategy that municipalities across the US and abroad have adopted that seeks to alter traffic and engage pedestrians to lessen the severity of accidents. In total, Hoboken has had three traffic fatalities since 2015.

As Hoboken’s streets get safer, the rest of America is getting less safe. Traffic fatalities in NYC were up 44% percent in the first quarter of 2022. Hoboken has empowered it’s pedestrians and every corner makes it clear they have the right of way. Hoboken’s streak of zero fatalities could end at any time, and eventually will, but that’s no reason for other cities and towns not to enable similar change. On to cartoons.

Somebody should remind the Conservative ideologue Justices that America is a multi-belief country:

It’s on the ballot in November:

Clarence rewrites the 2nd Amendment:

Now concealed carry has multiple meanings:

The scales of justice get a Conservative makeover:

The J6 hearings have inspired criticism from Texas. The late Molly Ivins referred to Texas as the “national laboratory for bad government”:

Uvalde ,TX failures give new meaning to an old idea:

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Free Speech Is About To Get Tested

The Daily Escape:

Lupine bloom, Beeks Bight, Folsom Lake, CA – May 2022 photo by Kaptured in Kamera

We’re back from France where we had fantastic weather, wonderful food and wine, and a break from the loud drumbeat of dystopian American news. One issue that Wrongo followed from afar was the continuing assault on free speech by America’s Right Wing.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“It seems like every week, Republicans propose, pass, or enact another outrageous, authoritarian, retrograde policy. Book bans, abortion bans, efforts to turn back the clock on marriage equality and contraception. Each is a fleeting political firestorm and then it’s on to the next….amidst this parade of retrograde lawmaking, there is a pattern…”

Despite claiming to be for small government, the Republicans want to dictate the terms of speech in America.

Consider Florida where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had passed legislation taking away the rights of Facebook, Twitter, and others to ban people from their platforms:

“The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Monday ruled it is unconstitutional for Florida to bar social media companies from banning politicians, in a major victory for tech companies….the court rejected many of the legal arguments that conservative states have been using to justify laws governing the content moderation policies of major tech companies after years of accusations that the tech companies are biased against their political viewpoints.”

The 11th Circuit court found that tech companies’ moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from regulating free speech. Interestingly, this comes after a different decision on the same issue by the Texas 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, that allowed a Texas law banning companies from discriminating against people based on their politics to remain in effect.

We now have completely opposite decisions by the 11th Circuit and the 5th Circuit courts on the issue of whether corporations must follow the Constitution’s First Amendment. This will invariably lead to the Supreme Court weighing in on whether private social media companies’ content moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment. From the WaPo:

“Some lawmakers pushing for laws governing online content moderation and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have argued that tech companies should be regulated as “common carriers,” businesses like phone companies that are subject to government regulation because of the essential services they provide.”

But Florida’s court rejected those arguments, arguing states can’t force such restrictions on private company social media platforms. While the phone companies cannot stop callers or calls that may be objectionable, or even illegal, social media companies have different rights. From the Court’s ruling:

“Neither law nor logic recognizes government authority to strip an entity of its First Amendment rights merely by labeling it a common carrier…”

The “Terms of Service” (TOS) agreements between social media platform companies and their users are a contract. When someone agrees to the TOS, they are saying that they will abide by it. Violating the TOS, whether by Trump, Musk, or some random ideologue, is a violation of contract law.

When the TOS is violated and the violator is suspended or barred from the platform, it doesn’t demonstrate bias, or a restriction in free speech. It demonstrates equal treatment. The TOS isn’t there only to restrain Conservatives, despite their protests of discrimination.

Florida passes a “don’t say gay” bill to police free speech by public educators in schools. They then pass the law to prevent private companies from policing speech on their platforms. This irony is lost on those who claim they’re against federal or state overreach unless it’s their Party that’s doing the overreaching.

The First Amendment says the government cannot punish you for speech (with some exceptions). The same Amendment also protects free association—meaning that it’s perfectly legal for private organizations to exercise their freedom of association even while excluding some speech.

Networks like Facebook and Twitter exert a lot of power over the flow of information. They are a primary method of news and expression for millions. That means they must be broadly inclusive and promote healthy discourse. Their business model includes wanting to attract as many users as possible. From Nicholas Grossmann: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The big social networks—Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter—aim to be the online mainstream, appealing to a wide variety of users and the businesses that sell to them. That requires stopping behavior that isn’t illegal, but makes the platform inhospitable, such as hate speech.”

The large private social networks have a responsibility not to let the doctrine of free speech make them give a right of way to bad actors. There is zero reason to cede the concept of free speech to the trolls who are trying to drive people they hate off private social media platforms.

Now we wait to see what Alito, Thomas and the other Conservative Supremes have to say about the limits of Free Speech.

You shouldn’t be optimistic about the outcome.

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