Social Conservatism – Page 2

Monday Wake Up Call – January 9, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Kennebunk, ME – January 2023 photo by Eric Storm Photography

Buried in the McCarthy debacle last week was some good news on the abortion front. From the NYT:

“For the first time, retail pharmacies, from corner drugstores to major chains like CVS and Walgreens, will be allowed to offer abortion pills in the United States under a regulatory change made Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration.”

The online magazine STAT asked an interesting question: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“When the Food and Drug Administration lifted some — but not all — of its restrictions on an abortion pill this week, it raised questions about why these rules were there in the first place. Mifepristone, the drug in question, has been used by over 3.7 million Americans to end early pregnancies since its approval in 2000, is more than 97% effective, tends to have only mild side effects such as cramping, with severe ones occurring in fewer than 0.5% of patients. So why was it on a list of prescription drugs requiring extra precautions and red tape, alongside opioid painkillers?”

Reform The Supreme Court

The Daily Escape:

Gold Creek Valley, WA – December 2022 photo by Erwin Buske Photography

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine

Welcome to 2023! It seems like a good time to think again about what’s worth fighting for. Paine valued freedom and despised oppression. In 2023, we could substitute the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for Paine’s original targets, which were Britain and King George III.

From Ed Walker: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In case after case, SCOTUS has ignored the trial record, made up its own facts, reached out to take cases before a record can be made, ignored precedent, including precedent about rejecting precedent, invented new Constitutional “doctrines”, taking faked-up cases for the sole purpose of striking down actions…and delaying justice through the shadow docket.”

The Shadow Docket is designed to allow the Court to engage in administrative management of its calendar so that the Justices have sufficient time to rule on emergency applications.

On Dec. 27, we saw an example of the Court’s reactionary majority using the Shadow Docket to extend indefinitely a Trump immigration policy known as Title 42. Trump implemented Title 42 to exclude asylum seekers from the US because they might be carriers of coronavirus.

From Vox’s Ian Millhiser:

“That decision…is typical behavior from the Supreme Court — or, at least, is reflective of this Court’s behavior since a Democrat moved into the White House….It’s the latest example of the Court dragging its feet after a GOP-appointed lower court judge overrides the Biden administration’s policy judgments, often letting that one judge decide the nation’s policy for…an entire year.

And that delay may be the best-case scenario for the Biden administration — and for the general principle that unelected judges aren’t supposed to decide the nation’s border policy. “

Millhiser points out that SCOTUS’ response is very different from when Trump was in office. Back then, the Court frequently raced to reinstate Trump’s policies within days.

The Court’s Conservative Six no longer seem to care about the law or precedent. It’s become a policy-making body in service of Conservative’s religious and social agendas. We should expect It to continue down this path until we reform the Court.

Reform is necessary to protect the legislative prerogatives of Congress, and the prerogatives of the Executive. Oh, and to protect the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

The NYT’s Adam Liptak says that SCOTUS has been rapidly accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government. He quotes Mark A. Lemley, a Stanford law professor’s article in The Harvard Law Review:

“The Court has taken significant, simultaneous steps to restrict the power of Congress, the administrative state, the states, and the lower federal courts. And it has done so using a variety of (often contradictory) interpretative methodologies. The common denominator across multiple opinions in the last two years is that they concentrate power in one place: the Supreme Court.”

Non-elected activist judges indeed.

We have historically entrusted courts with the task of determining which rights belong to the people, and the extent to which governments at all levels can exercise their Constitutional powers in controlling the people. We know that courts have always lagged behind the consensus of the American People on issues of rights. But before now, change has come, albeit slowly.

That ended with SCOTUS’ decision in Dobbs, where the Conservative Six ruled that women have no right to control their own bodies.

Earlier, they imposed their religious view that coaches are free to dragoon their players into worshiping the God of the coach’s choice, and that religious leaders are free to spread a pandemic, despite public health officials’ warnings.

Neither Congress nor the President have resisted SCOTUS’s power grab. They haven’t even taken the mild step of imposing ethical requirements on the Court. The other two branches have simply watched the Conservative Six operate in their self-declared role of Philosopher Kings. We now have a Supreme Court tinkering with the Separation of Powers, based solely on political and ideological preference.

As if to justify their power without restraint or oversight, Chief Justice John Roberts recently cited the myth of “three separate and co-equal branches of government.” But that isn’t what the Founders and Framers had in mind, and it isn’t what the Constitution says.

In fact, the judiciary was third in line of power and importance in the minds of the Framers of the Constitution. Article III clearly puts the Supreme Court under the control of Congress. Section 2 is unambiguous:

“[T]he supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

The founders felt the judiciary was not co-equal. In Federalist 51, James Madison proclaims:

“[I]n republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates.”

In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton writes:

“[T]he judiciary is beyond compare the weakest of the three departments of power.”

It’s important to remember that the power to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed by the President was not granted by the Constitution: it was taken by the Court onto itself in 1803 in the case Marbury v Madison.

Soon SCOTUS will rule in Moore v Harper. Moore hinges on a legal proposition known as the “independent state legislature theory.” The theory says that, when it comes to making state laws that apply to federal elections — from drawing congressional district lines, to determining the who-what-when-where of casting a ballot — only the state legislature itself has the power to set the rules.

Moore is an opportunity for the court to reject radicalism, but SCOTUS may upend our democracy with their decision.

SCOTUS has legalized bribery of politicians (Citizens United) and ignored potentially seditious behavior by its own members and their families. Not to mention exceeding its Constitutional authority by inserting itself into political issues, now with startling regularity.

It’s time to reign in the Supremes before they reign over us.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 20, 2022

According to the LA Times, come January, more than 80% of Americans will live in states with governments entirely controlled by one of the two major Parties. That means when all the new legislators and governors are sworn in, 39 states will be controlled by the same Party, a seven-decade high.

That means Americans will have to live with greater differences in their schools, workplaces, and doctors’ offices as they move cross state lines. A citizen’s right to carry a gun, to get an abortion, to join a union and the rate a minimum-wage job pays, will now depend almost entirely on whether their state is Blue or Red.

Can’t let Sunday go by without talking about Jack Smith, appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to carry forward the Trump Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigations.

It does have advantages: It makes it simple for the DOJ to refuse Rep. Jim Jordan’s demands for information about the various Trump investigations. You can’t subpoena a special counsel during an investigation.

Second, It ensures the continuity of any prosecution after 2025, no matter who is elected. That’s important since it’s possible that neither the stolen documents nor the coup attempt investigations may be completed by then. And it isn’t the first time a special counsel was appointed when Congress changed hands. Remember that John Durham became a special counsel in December 2020 as Bill Barr was deciding to leave as Attorney General, and the Congress was about to change hands in January 2021. That shielded Durham from political interference in case Trump lost the election. Durham investigated potential criminal misconduct that might have occurred during the Trump-Russia probe without success. His investigation continues today. On to cartoons.

But what’s political?

Investigations are what the people want:

Will the GOP move on?

Elephant tries to let him down easy:

Who’s next?

McCarthy fills the Speaker’s shoes:

Saturday Soother – August 20, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Stormy view from House Mountain, Sedona, AZ – August 2022 photo by Ed Mitchell

Tens of thousands of teacher openings are unfilled as students head back to American classrooms. That’s prompting states and school districts to try everything they can to address the teacher shortage.

Except increase their pay. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has tracked teacher compensation for 18 years. Here’s the headline:

“…teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time.”

EPI tracks what they call the relative teacher wage penalty, the relative wages and total compensation of teachers compared to other college graduates. Here are the EPI’s findings:

Inflation-adjusted average weekly wages of teachers have been relatively flat since 1996. The average weekly wages of public school teachers (adjusted for inflation) increased just $29 from 1996 to 2021, while inflation-adjusted weekly wages of other college graduates rose from $1,564 to $2,009 —a $445 increase.

The relative teacher wage penalty reached a record high in 2021. It was 23.5% in 2021, up from 6.1% in 1996. The penalty was worse for men than for women. The penalty for men rose from 18.6% to 35.2%.
The great portfolio of teachers’ benefits used to be a selling point, but it hasn’t been enough to offset the growing wage penalty. The teacher total compensation penalty was 14.2% in 2021 (a 23.5% wage penalty offset by a 9.3% benefits advantage).
The relative teacher wage penalty exceeds 20% in 28 states. Teacher weekly wage penalties estimated for each state range from 3.4% in Rhode Island to 35.9% in Colorado. In 28 states, teachers are paid less than 80 cents on the dollar earned by similar college-educated workers.

The EPI has a chart showing the relative erosion of teacher wages vs. other college graduates since 1980:

The EPI focuses on “weekly wages” to avoid the comparisons of length of the work year (i.e., the “summers off” issue for teachers).

Add to this the general decline in working conditions for teachers, and many who are eligible for retirement are leaving. Republicans in particular are politicizing education. Some are pushing the idea of “parental rights.” That is happening in Florida, Texas and in other states. It’s clear that in some school districts parents want the right to censor what’s being taught. Some Conservatives are pushing for a camera in every classroom across America. Tucker Carlson called for cameras in classrooms to “oversee the people teaching your children, forming their minds.”

This comes under the guise of “transparency in the classroom”, parents keeping an eye on teachers, so they won’t teach the dreaded Critical Race Theory (or groom kids to become trans, or gay). Teachers naturally bristle at the idea of video auditing.

Forcing teacher compliance with imposed politicized curricula won’t make these jobs any more desirable.

Some states are relaxing licensing requirements to make it easier for people to fill some of those unfilled jobs. Florida, which has about 8,000 open teaching positions, is allowing military veterans without a bachelor’s degree and no prior teaching experience to apply for a temporary five-year teaching certificate while they finish their bachelor’s degrees.

The biggest issues to solve are better public school funding, which can help end the teacher wage penalty. That requires towns to raise taxes. Second, the politicization of education is changing the amount of parental control in the day-to-day operations in some school districts. That’s making teaching an even lower-status job than it is now.

According to the BLS, there are currently 300,000 fewer teachers nationwide compared to before the pandemic. Part of this is job satisfaction. A survey from the American Federation of Teachers found that 74% of teachers were dissatisfied with their job, up from 41% two years ago.

If teachers and staff are underpaid, under-resourced and are now being second-guessed in the classroom, they’re not going to stay. So replacing them will become an even bigger problem.

Enough of this week’s problems, it’s time for our Saturday Soother! Let’s put Trump’s secrets and Liz Cheney’s political prospects on pause. We’re facing moderate drought conditions here in CT, so lawn mowing has ceased, and our grass is brown and crunchy.

But, it’s time to empty our minds, so that we can begin filling them up again on Monday. Start by grabbing a cold glass of lemonade and a seat in the shade.

Now, watch and listen to Antonin Dvorak’s “4 miniatures”, for 2 Violins and Viola, played here by the Musicians of Lenox Hill at Temple Israel of the City of New York in April 2019:

Monday Wake Up Call – June 6, 2022

The Daily Escape:

St. John’s Bridge, Columbia River, OR – June 2022 photo by David Leahy

In The American Prospect, Alexander Sammon asks a really big question: Why Are Police So Bad at Their Jobs? Sammon points out:

“Cops nationwide can’t stop crimes from happening or solve them once they’ve occurred.”

According to data published by the FBI, the rates at which police forces are solving crimes are at historic lows. In the case of murders and violent crime, clearance rates have dipped to just 50%, a startling decline from the 1980s, when police cleared 70% of all homicides.

We know that murders have increased since 2019, and violent crime (broadly defined), has also inched up over the same period. OTOH, property crimes are down, contrary to what Republicans and their Party’s news outlets would have you believe when they obsessively show videos of LA, San Francisco, and Portland.

And all crime, including the murder rate, remain well below 1990 levels. Sammon points out that crime today is much more distributed geographically than before. It used to be that Los Angeles and New York accounted for 13.5% of all murders nationally; now it’s only 4%.

While crime clearance rates have dropped to all-time lows, police budgets have reached all-time highs. In the business world, we would say that the marginal dollar of investment is producing a negative return compared to the forecast. In the business world, that gets you fired. Sammon quotes University of Utah law professor Shima Baradaran Baughman:

“Increases in police officers or police budgets have not been shown to reduce crime or make us safer.”

And clearance rates can be easily manipulated. They are not a proxy for crimes that have been solved since they equate to arrests. More from Baughman:

“All they tell us is whether there has been an arrest made in a case…not whether that person is actually ….eventually convicted of the crime…”

He says that convictions are a better measure of whether a crime was actually cleared, and those numbers are substantially lower than the already abysmal national clearance rates.

The Guardian points out that proponents of increasing police budgets argue that more law enforcement is the solution to more violence. But Samuel Sinyangwe, a policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence and Police Scorecard, notes that:

“…fewer than 5% of arrests nationally are for serious violent crimes. And research has shown that when police forces expand, there are more arrests for low-level offenses…”

Since the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations call for police budgets to be defunded, not a single major American city has slashed its police funding. In fact almost all of them have increased spending on their police forces. Biden released a budget proposal for an additional $30 billion in law enforcement and crime prevention efforts, including funding to put “more police officers on the beat”.

America needs to answer the question of why police departments haven’t been able to convert increasing budgets into more effective crime-solving.

Meanwhile, the Uvalde murders underscore police forces’ inability to prevent crime from happening and/or stop them in progress. We’ve been slow to get the real story from the local police, but it’s clear that the police response to the shooting in progress was shameful.

While record police budgets aren’t keeping crime from happening, there’s some evidence that more resources in investigative work might improve clearance rates. But today’s police budgets prioritize presence on the streets instead.

The problem is that police reform is really hard. There are what appear to be intractable cultural issues within departments. The police unions need to be brought to heel. More accountability is a necessity. And their relationships with the community are terrible. If you suggest that your town or city shift some law enforcement resources to support the social work aspects of the job (thereby freeing cops to focus on actual law enforcement), you will be accused of wanting to “defund the police”, and the idea will die.

Time to wake up America! Both Democrats and Republicans want police budgets to grow. But neither have any answers as to how incremental dollars will help make the police more effective at their jobs! Progressives have been scapegoated by Republicans for their anti-police funding attitudes, but they’re the only political group saying we shouldn’t continue throwing more good money at a failed solution.

It’s a fact that our police departments aren’t solving crimes, despite devoting larger and larger sums to them. And heavily policed communities have good reason to continue to mistrust police involvement, thereby also depressing case closure rates. Failing to solve crimes only adds to that; why would marginalized communities respect a police force that doesn’t do its job particularly well?

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Rob Hustle’s 2021 rap, “Call the Cops”. It’s a lyric video:

Tuesday Wake Up Call – May 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Ocean City, NJ – April 2022 photo by Sri Reddy

Jennifer Rubin’s article in the WaPo says that the GOP is not a political party anymore. It’s become a movement dedicated to imposing White Christian nationalism:

“The media blandly describes the GOP’s obsessions as “culture wars,” but that suggests there is another side seeking to impose its views on others. In reality, only one side is repudiating pluralistic democracy — White, Christian…who are becoming a minority group and want to maintain their political power.”

These are the people driving the Republican bus. Any progress is soon followed by their claims of victimhood. From Rubin:

“No one should be surprised that the “big lie” has become gospel in White evangelical churches. The New York Times reports: “In the 17 months since the presidential election, pastors at these churches have preached about fraudulent votes and vague claims of election meddling.…For these church leaders, Mr. Trump’s narrative of the 2020 election has become a prominent strain in an apocalyptic vision of the left running amok.”

America was founded as a Christian nation, by (White) Christians; and its laws and institutions are based on “Biblical” (that is, Protestant) Christianity. As Georgetown’s Phillip Gorski says about Jan. 6:

“Christians waved Trump flags. The “Proud Boys” kneeled and prayed. One man, decked out as a cosplay crusader, clutched a large leather Bible to his chest with skeleton gloves. What looked like apples and oranges turned out to be a fruit cocktail: White Christian nationalism.”

Widening out to society at large, the Republican Christian Right is successfully walking a line between two seemingly contradictory notions: That our nation is the greatest nation on earth precisely because it is a Christian nation; and at the same time, that our nation is overrun with evil forces.

The precepts of Christianity were meant to make us more accepting and humane towards others. Today, these people are about doing the opposite of that.

The BJC’s (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) report on the Jan. 6 coup includes survey data from February 2021, showing that Christian nationalist ideology (specifically, belief that the founding documents of the US are divinely inspired, or that the federal government should declare the US a Christian nation) were strongly associated with the belief that Black Lives Matter and Antifa started the violence on Jan. 6:

Source: Public Discourse and Ethics Survey, Wave 7 (February 2021) Fielded by YouGov. Survey design by Joshua B. Grubbs and Samuel L. Perr

The graph shows that the more White Americans agree with Christian nationalism, the more likely they were to believe conspiracy theories about the involvement of Black Lives Matter or Antifa.

Since the founding of the country, we’ve gradually gained a panoply of rights; rights which could not be infringed by federal, state, and municipal governments. Now, the six Christian conservatives on the Supreme Court plan to gut many of those decisions.

The effort to blur the lines between church and state in America may be reaching its zenith. On April 25, the Supreme Court heard Kennedy v Bremerton School District, the first case involving prayer and public schools to reach the high court since 2000.

America’s Constitution promises the “free exercise” of religion; but it also prohibits the “establishment” of religion. Recently the Supreme Court has been strengthening the first guarantee: the right to live your faith free from government meddling, while chipping away at the wall separating church from state.

The issue in the Kennedy case was whether a public school district had the authority to prevent a high school football coach from continuing his practice of leading student-athletes in midfield prayer immediately after games.

Four justices had previously supported Kennedy when the case first came to the Supreme Court in 2019. At oral arguments this time, both Justice Coney Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts also sounded inclined to join the four in favoring free exercise over religion-state separation.

The decision in this case may change our long-held First Amendment rights into something less than they were designed to be.

Time to wake up America! The Culture Wars are the tip of the Constitutional threat iceberg. We’ve all shrugged and walked away from people who think the worst about non-White, non-straight Americans. We can’t do that anymore.

To help you wake up, listen to The Judds’ “Love Can Build a Bridge”. Naomi Judd died over the weekend. Here it’s sung by Naomi and Wynonna on April 11, 2022. This was Naomi’s last public performance:

Sample Lyric:

When we stand together, it’s our finest hour
We can do anything (anything)
Anything (anything)
Keep believin’ in the power

DeSantis vs. Disney

The Daily Escape:

Sea glass, Provincetown, MA – April 2022 photo by Nancy Kaplan

Today we continue discussing the growing Republican culture wars, this time in Florida against Disney. NBC News reported:

“The Florida Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would dissolve the special taxing district that allows the Walt Disney Co. to self-govern in its theme park area.”

Walt Disney World has effectively operated as its own municipal government in central Florida since a 1967 state law established what’s called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an area encompassing 25,000 acres near Orlando. The law grants Disney a wide range of authority, including the power to issue bonds and provide its own utilities and emergency services, such as fire protection.

That law is in large part what convinced Disney originally to come to Florida. It has since become the state’s largest private employer with 80,000 jobs.

On Wednesday, the Florida senate passed a bill that would dissolve all independent special districts established before 1968, including Reedy Creek. Lawmakers voted 23 to 16 in favor of the bill during a special session of the state Legislature.

This is part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) and the Republican-controlled legislature‘s escalating culture war with Disney over the company’s opposition to recently passed legislation in Florida that Disney considers to be anti-gay. Disney’s leadership has criticized the legislation that prevents classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through the third grade.

Disney later said it would pause making campaign donations in Florida and also said it hoped that the law would either be repealed or struck down by the courts.

Wrongo is old enough to remember when the GOP believed that corporations had free speech and should be pretty much immune from regulation. But it now seems that corporations can be harassed or investigated unless they fall in line with the goals of the Republican culture war.

Targeting Disney only became a thing after the company spoke out about the “don’t say gay” law. Charles Cooke in the National Review notes that:

“Until about a month ago, Walt Disney World’s legal status was not even a blip on the GOP’s radar. No Republicans were calling for it to be revisited….”

Cooke says that Florida’s legislature has had five opportunities over the past 50 years to remove Disney’s sweetheart deal and didn’t. But context is everything. After the DeSantis effort to punish Disney, the legislature piled on, pretending that it’s doing so out of a concern for “good government”.

The fun part is that Disney’s status is not unique. Florida has 1,844 special districts, of which 1,288, like Walt Disney World, are “independent.” Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark offers up examples of a few more of these districts:

The Villages (where Governor DeSantis announced his review of Disney’s status)
Orlando International Airport
The Daytona International Speedway

Wrongo isn’t defending Disney’s right to special treatment, despite he and Ms. Right having a granddaughter who works for Disney in CA.

Wrongo would be fine if Florida took away all special breaks from these large corporations.

The Disney special district is really a form of corporate welfare. And no Republican with serious national ambitions wants to be against corporate welfare. So instead, DeSantis tries punishing Disney as part of his red-hot culture war. If this move was really about good public policy, then Republicans would have done it through their regular legislative process. But that clearly wasn’t their intent.

Overlooked in the anti-Disney hype, was that this bill was attached to other legislation approved by the Florida senate, a Congressional redistricting map that eliminates two predominantly Black Congressional districts and tilts the balance of the Florida delegation even more to the Republicans. Democrats were especially critical of an amendment added Tuesday that requires all lawsuits challenging the redistricting map to be filed in Leon Circuit Court. This is an attempt to sidestep the federal court in Tallahassee where in the past, most election law cases have been challenged and found to be unconstitutional.

The new map is expected to boost Republicans’ current 16-11 Congressional advantage to 20–8. Republicans would likely own roughly 71% of the state’s Congressional seats in a state where Trump won with 51.2% of the vote in 2020. Florida also gained a seat during the most recent census.

The Party claiming to be against “Big Government” is using the government to punish a private company for permissible business decisions. As Heather Cox Richardson says:

“The Walt Disney Company delivers to the state more than $409 million in sales taxes for tickets alone, employs more than 80,000 Florida residents, and supports more than 400,000 more jobs. Today, the Miami Herald reported that repealing the company’s governing authority would raise taxes on families in the area by $2,200 each.”

Anyone else getting really tired of Republicans telling us we can’t say certain words, we can’t read certain books, we can’t teach certain things, or that we can’t talk about certain history? And why are they taking away our freedom to vote?

What’s Conservative about any of that?

Texas Wingnuttery

The Daily Escape:

Easter morning at Lake Tapps, with Mt. Rainer in background, Pierce County, WA – April 2022 photo by Motojw Photography. This picture was cropped by Wrongo to fit the blog’s page. View the original photo here.

Two examples of Texas wingnuttery, and it’s only Tuesday. First, the WaPo has an article showing how Conservative groups are teaming up with politicians to remove books and to change membership of local library boards:

“In early November, an email dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read ‘Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.’”

The author was Bonnie Wallace, a local church volunteer who had attached an Excel spreadsheet with 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches:

“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,”

In January, commissioners voted to dissolve the existing library board and created a reconstituted board of mostly political appointees, including many of the citizens who had complained about books. They named Ms. Wallace the vice chair of a new library board stacked with conservative appointees some of whom didn’t even have library cards.

Later, Baker was fired, and Llano joined a growing number of communities across America where conservatives have mounted challenges to books and other content they deem to be inappropriate.

A movement that started by influencing school boards has now expanded to public libraries. They accounted for 37% of book challenges last year, according to the American Library Association. Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures.

No one is forced to go to a public library. If someone goes to a public library, nobody is forcing that person to read a book while there, or to take a book out of the public library. It’s called a “public” library for a reason. The library serves all of the public, not just a small interest group (or individual) who feels they have the right to decide what all citizens should or shouldn’t read.

The issue is denial of public access.

Second, the NYT reports that a Texas state legislator warned Citigroup that he would introduce a bill to prevent the bank from underwriting municipal bonds in the state unless it rescinded its policy covering travel expenses for employees who go outside their state to seek an abortion. This Texas politician is attempting to dictate a national anti-abortion policy:

“Citigroup stated in a filing on Tuesday that it would provide travel benefits to employees seeking abortions outside their state, “in response to changes in reproductive health care laws in certain states.” Last year, Texas enacted a law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law took effect in September.”

It’s important to remember Enron, a now-defunct Texas corporation known for its massive accounting fraud, used to threaten banks with withdrawing all of their business if the bank’s analysts gave accurate opinions about Enron’s stock. It appears that remains a model for Republican governance.

Lots of high tech companies have diversity programs and progressive employee policies. Many have extensive operations in Texas. It’s going to take some time but Texas will suffer disinvestment as companies move elsewhere.

Because Texas is becoming Taliban country.

Here’s a long quote from Oliver Cromwell, speaking to the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653, the day he dissolved it. He could easily be speaking to today’s Republican Party:

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”

Should Biden Run Again?

The Daily Escape:

Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley NP – November 2021 photo by Ed Kendall

Paul Campos asks: “Should Biden run again in 2024?” While Martin Longman asks what explains Joe Biden’s steep decline in the polls in the latter half of 2021?

Jonathan Chait has an idea:

“Nobody can say with any confidence if this fall can be reversed. Indeed, given the US’s steady job growth, nobody can ascertain exactly why the public has turned so sour so fast. Biden is like a patient wasting away from some undiagnosable disease. What is clear is that if the presidential election were held this fall, Biden would enter the contest as the decided underdog against Trump.”

All of us have been on the wrong side of failing someone’s unstated expectations. We didn’t know we were taking a test; we didn’t know our actions were being scored, and naturally, we failed. That’s where Biden is today. Regardless of the analysis, it seems clear that Biden would lose an election to a Republican if it were held today, probably even to Trump.

But the reasons for Biden’s poor poll numbers are at least to Wrongo, unclear. At the 2020 presidential election, people were crying out for a return to normalcy. Back to Campos:

“It’s clear that a big underlying reason for Biden’s success in 2020 was a widespread…belief/hope among voters…that electing an anodyne middle of the road elderly white man — you know, a normal person, as opposed to a woman or a minority or a Jewish radical leftist [sic] — would calm things down after all the Trump craziness, and the Republican party would at least trend back toward being a center right party…”

We didn’t return to normal, and maybe, there isn’t a normal to return to. If that’s true, “Make America Great Again” will again have tons of appeal.

Wrongo detects among Democrats a perception that Biden and the Democratic Party are all in on tying their policies to racial justice. While that’s well-intended, and good strategy for energizing the base of People Of Color, it’s causing some dissatisfaction among Whites and certain Hispanic sub-segments.

That showed in this year’s Virginia and New Jersey elections. White suburban women moved away from the Dems in both states.

In Passaic, NJ, Hispanics make up about 70% of the population. Trump won 22% of their vote in 2016, and 36% in 2020. The 2021 Republican candidate for governor won a similar percentage. A Republican won a seat on the county board of commissioners for the first time in more than a decade.

These results should be a wakeup call for Democrats.

A recent Pew Research study divided the electorate into nine affinity groups, four Republican, four Democratic and a disaffected group that didn’t fit well into either Party’s coalition. Pew found that among: (brackets by Wrongo)

“….the four Republican-oriented typology groups…[fewer]…than…a quarter say a lot more needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic background; by comparison, no fewer than about three-quarters of any Democratic group say a lot more needs to be done to achieve this goal.”

This gulf on one of the central questions facing our nation suggests that for now at least, Republicans have a powerful message to take to Independents and undecideds in the mid-terms and beyond. From Tom Sullivan:

“The MAGA squad on Capitol Hill sees waging culture war as the very point of holding political office: stoking anger, provoking fights, “owning the libs,” and advancing conspiracy theories.”

Everything isn’t about Dems being too pro-equality. Things like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation, the supply chain disruptions, and the Delta variant of Covid have something to do with Biden’s poor numbers, along with no prospect of returning to normal.

Should Biden not run in 2024? Do the Democrats have a viable national candidate who could step into Biden’s shoes? Having a president candidate in their early to mid-80s, like Biden will be, isn’t optimal. That would seem to rule out both Sanders and Warren.

Kamala Harris looks to be doomed at least for now as a national candidate. She polls behind Biden. About the only thing low-information voters know about her are her gender and ethnicity. All else being equal, being nonwhite and female are probably national electoral handicaps this time around. She does appeal to many minority voters. But are there enough minority voters in swing states who would be willing to vote for her?

Given the ossification of the Democrats, the question of “Who should run?” feels like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We’re one election away from permanent Republican rule that will bring with them “show elections”. So far, no Democrat with the exception of a few dark horses, like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, appear to have the smarts and charisma to be credible with the disaffected middle road of American voters.

Maybe the Dems have no realistic alternative to Biden in 2024.

Who do you think should run?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 11, 2021

The Right is in hysterics over “critical race theory” (CRT) possibly being taught in public schools. They’re using it as an excuse to try to take over local school boards.

We’re seeing headlines saying, “Republicans push back against critical race theory”. Social media has photos showing “parents” being loud and stupid at school board meetings. You’d think they were protesting because their kids were being forced to eat vegan in the cafeteria!

But instead, what they were protesting is the remote possibility that their kids could be exposed to the truth: that there’s a great deal of racism in America’s past. Sadly, most of those who are making a stink about CRT are either ignorant of what it really means, or simply want to whitewash racism.

In other words, while the use of the expression “pushing back” makes it sound as if people are on the defensive against some odious assault; that isn’t the case at all. These people are on offense.

When the press reports Republicans are “pushing back”, in reality, they are launching a batshit campaign of disinformation and hysteria about whatever the subject is: vaccine policies, fake news, election fraud or, this time, teaching about the impact racism has had on our society.

They have conjured another imaginary monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation’s defenders from the fictional monster.

Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny”, had a column in the NYT looking at the current brawl about teaching US history. He sees American conservatives creating what he calls “memory laws”, something that is familiar to students of Russian history:

“This spring, memory laws arrived in America. Republican state legislators proposed dozens of bills designed to guide and control American understanding of the past. As of this writing, five states (Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma) have passed laws that direct and restrict discussions of history in classrooms. The Department of Education of a sixth (Florida) has passed guidelines with the same effect. Another 12 state legislatures are still considering memory laws.”

And this isn’t the first time. For many decades, conservative southern school boards have put great pressure on textbook publishers to favor “Intelligent design” over evolution/natural selection (and before that, the Biblical version of creation), and to downplay slavery and emphasize states’ rights in discussing the origin of the Civil War.

GOP politicians should take a beat and remember how the GI Bill discriminated against Black veterans. They should learn how redlining limited where Black vets could purchase homes.

Should we “forget” the compromises in the US Constitution, like the 3/5 clause that southern states required in order to formally ratify it?

Should the reality that the zip code you live in greatly influences the quality of education you receive, also be ignored? These things are all part of the nation’s history. All should be examined so that we can continue moving toward the ideal of being a nation with liberty and justice for ALL. On to cartoons.

The Republican plan: