Polluter panels

Snow overnight and rain today (with temps at the freezing point) means my evening rehearsal was canceled. Likely more snow coming. So this is a chance to share a few things in my browser tabs.

Sometime last year the GOP controlled Michigan legislature created panels to oversee the state’s environmental regulations. Alas, it’s no big surprise that the voting members on these panels are representatives from oil, gas, solid waste, and public utility companies. The former GOP governor signed it into law. These “polluter panels” have the authority to overrule all new environmental regulations. Keep in mind Flint with its disastrous water problems is in Michigan.

Incoming Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order to abolish the panels. Within two days the still GOP controlled House voted to overturn her order. The vote was along party lines. The state Senate has begun hearings on whether to also vote to overturn the order. One election (under gerrymandered districts) wasn’t enough to throw the bums out.



The GOP in Tennessee have introduced the Tennessee Natural Marriage Act. Yeah, it’s an effort to ban same-sex marriages. It was introduced before and failed. The reason it is being proposed is to have a way of taking same-sex marriage back to a more conservative Supreme Court in hopes they will overturn the 2015 ruling.

Anti-abortion advocates are passing laws in several states to attempt the same kind of thing.



Allegra Kirkland of Talking Points Memo gives many reasons why the 2020 census could be a disaster. Voting rights advocates and election law experts warn…

Inadequate funds, insufficient outreach, a wave of high-profile data breaches, and a deep mistrust of the Trump administration among minority communities compound the bureaucratic challenge inherent in moving the census online for the first time.

There’s mistrust of the nasty guy even if he can’t force a citizenship question on to the census. That mistrust means many minority groups think the census data might be given to the FBI or ICE, even though the census, by law, can’t share personal information.

We’ll be invited to do the census online and the recent huge data breaches make people think that isn’t safe. There is real fear that Congress simply won’t allocate enough money. And because 2020 is a presidential election year there is fear the census will become a political issue.

All these fears could mean a large undercount of minority populations. Yet census data is used to allocate federal dollars, to decide how many representatives a state sends to the US House, and to draw district boundaries for the next decade. An accurate count is basic to our democracy.