Detailed plans for how they will wreck the federal government

In the comment section of a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted (with protest) a few cartoons joking about Biden’s age. That’s a big topic now that he has announced another run for the presidency and a lot of stories are noting that Biden will be 86 at the end of his second term. Velez noted that these jokes and stories leave out that the nasty guy is only three years younger, so will be 83 in 2028. Also left out: Biden is healthy and of sound mind, while the nasty guy isn’t healthy and has been showing signs of dementia. And VP Harris will be in her early 60s during that second term. Not long after Tennessee Republicans expelled two black representatives who they felt disrespected them for speaking against their schemes of oppression and hit significant blowback, Republicans in another state want to do the same. This time the scene is Montana. It also has a Republican supermajority with plans for oppression. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported in this case it is transgender children. In defiant opposition is Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is a transgender woman. Zephyr spoke against the bill, saying denying care means transgender children die. She hoped at the next invocation prayer “you see the blood on your hands.” Yeah, bigots trying to implement oppression do not like to be called out on their bigotry. They demanded Zephyr apologize. She refused. So on Thursday, April 20, they censured her. During debates on Thursday and Friday they would not recognize her to join the debate. On Monday a crowd of protesters gathered outside the Capitol chanting, “Let her speak!” An AP article posted on Kos reported after the rally outside the protest moved inside to the House gallery and the same chant brought House business to a halt. House leadership asked police to clear the gallery, and seven were arrested. They claimed an unacceptable attack on civil discourse, though nothing was damaged and no one was injured or even threatened. Tuesday’s floor session was canceled. Michel Martin of NPR spoke to Mara Silvers of the Montana Free Press. That Republican supermajority voted to bar Zephyr from the House floor for the rest of the session. She can vote, but not participate in debates. The reason for their action was they said Zephyr encouraged the protests in the gallery by holding a microphone in the air. While the anti-transgender bill will easily pass, the governor’s signature is no longer guaranteed. That’s because David Gianforte, child of the governor, has publicly come out as nonbinary and has been lobbying their father, saying their own friends will be harmed by the bill. Einenkel also reported that these efforts of oppression are deeply unpopular. When a progressive policy is on the ballot it passes easily. So the Republican effort now is to make it harder to put progressive policies on the ballot. Ohio residents are working to get a constitutional amendment preserving abortions on the November ballot. So Republicans are working to get an amendment raising the level of votes needed to ratify an amendment onto the August primary ballot, when the turnout is lower. The Missouri legislature is also getting such an amendment onto the ballot, even without the threat of preserving abortion. Dartagnan of the Kos community reported Republicans have also noticed the youngest voters are going strongly for Democrats. So they’re increasing their efforts at suppression of college student voters. In a functioning democracy the politicians would modify their platform when they see what they propose is widely unpopular. But that’s not what America has. Instead of changing the platform they change who can vote, as they yell about the youth being radically indoctrinated. In the process they are turning off young voters – which could be a big deal because people tend to vote for the same party their entire lives. Shove them away when they’re young means shoving them away for a lifetime. Nick Anderson of RA News of Texas tweeted a cartoon in response to a new Texas law requiring the Jewish Christian Ten Commandments be posted in every school. The cartoon shows a man shoving a Ten Commandment tablet into a child’s mouth as the man says, “Repeat after me: Schools are for education, not indoctrination!” Meteor Blades of Kos wrote about the new Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise published by the Heritage Foundation. This 900 page manifesto details exactly what conservatives want to do to the federal government whenever they get the chance. The 30 chapters discuss what they want done with the presidency, each federal department, personnel agencies, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Federal Reserve, Export-Import Bank, Small Business Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Elections Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and a few more. Each chapter is written by a person who knows a bit about that department or agency – such as Ben Carson, former head of HUD writing about HUD. We can’t say we’ll hope for the best if Republicans are able to seize control. These people have detailed plans for how they will wreck the federal government, to make sure it can’t help the poor and those who need it. There will be no protection of the little guy from the big guy. Instead, what’s left of the government will be reworked to help the rich and punish those whom the rich want punished (which is everyone not rich). David Atkins, a member of the DNC from California, tweeted a thread that begins with a chart of the 2016 electorate (the 2020 data not available). It has dots representing voters, red for Republican, blue for Democrat. The dots are spread with economic liberals to the left and economic conservatives to the right. Also, social liberals are on the bottom and social conservatives are on top. The blue dots are mostly in the lower left quadrant. The red dots are mostly in the top half with the center of the large cluster a bit to the right of the balance between economic liberal and conservative. Atkins used the chart to explain Democrats are chasing the wrong thing. The quadrant of those who are economic conservative and socially liberal is mostly empty. And the social conservative and economic liberals, the people that love Social Security but hate LGBTQ people, aren’t going to vote for Dems. That means Democrats shouldn’t try to chase moderates, they should move even more liberal in both social and economic issues. There is no group they would lose if they did. When I can I end a post with something uplifting or witty. Alas, not today. Leah McElrath tweeted a link to an article in the New York Times (no paywall on this one) about the crime scene investigators and what they saw at the Sandy Hook school after the shooting. One of the milder things they dealt with was dumping out twenty uneaten lunches and mistakenly reading a love note from a mother to a child. You think we have to witness an event to preserve it? Go see what these people saw before answering that question. This isn’t an issue of public perception. Not seeing the horror is different from refusing to understand the horror. McElrath added:

There are three events over the past two decades that normalized mass death in ways that still send chills down my spine: • The 9/11 attacks • The Sandy Hook massacre • The COVID pandemic ... I am sharing it because we must remember the massacre of our innocent was once unthinkable. It is now not only thinkable but has been repeated many times on various scales. Our children now drill for these scenarios. ... Living in fear is NOT freedom.

Dr. Anonymous is important to LGBTQ history

Two weeks ago I wrote about nuclear fusion as a source of energy, a source that’s quite clean in contrast to highly dangerous nuclear fission. I wrote about it because Lawrence Livermore National Lab announced they had achieved more energy from the fusion than needed to fire that lasers that made the fusion happen – if one ignores the hundred times that energy needed to get the lasers ready to fire. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote a good explanation of what fusion is and what was actually achieved at the lab this month. He reviewed the history of the research, including the different ways that fusion could be triggered. Then he discussed the progress being made by other methods of achieving fusion. He included a few videos for more information. Sumner concluded that the constant refrain of fusion always being “20 to 30 years away” is probably no longer accurate. Clean commercially available fusion energy might happen sooner than that. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that Republicans seemed determined to continue imposing far right policies even though such policies are quite unpopular. One would think the issue of abortion contributing to their November losses would prompt them to rethink their plans. But no. This discussion was brought on by a South Carolina legislator who proposed an amendment to the state constitution to define gender “without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen or subjective experience of gender.” Take that you pesky trans people! Wrote McCarter:

Both the midterm results and exit polling from November’s ballot demonstrate just how much the general public doesn’t want lawmakers to be obsessing over anti-LGBTQ+ crap. Just 5% of voters said transgender health care and participation in sports mattered to them in this election. The majority were electing a record number of LGBTQ+ candidates, with 1,065 openly LGBTQ+ people running, and 340 winning.

Trans people aren’t the only ones being hit. There are copycat “Don’t Say Gay” bills and a “Women’s Bill of Rights” (and we know how fake that will be because the right to an abortion isn’t included). It is all part of an effort to be seen as the “protector” of women and children when women and children need protection from them. So why are they doing all this unpopular stuff? Because all of these far right issues will be challenged in court. And many will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now stacked in their favor. Adam Zyglis has an appropriate cartoon. It shows an elephant cramming a cork in a teacher’s mouth. As a way of understanding the war in Ukraine Sumner reviewed the TV series Andor. It’s part of the Star Wars universe and Sumner says it is quite good – much better than the usual story in the franchise. I won’t attempt to discuss the story. Instead, I’ll mention some of the things that Sumner says contribute to a Fascist regime. The first is the relationship between capitalism and fascism:

The authoritarian government is happy to tolerate both the corporate structure and the corporate police so long as capitalism is sufficient to keep the people distracted from concerns about the empire. Keeping those workers at the ragged edge, where they worry more about feeding their families is the goal. But the fascists don’t hesitate to directly take the reins when they believe the corporate rulers aren’t being adequately oppressive.

Keeping workers so poor that they’re focused on feeding their families means they’re not focused on the brutality of the regime. The next topic is colonialism.

Notably, the indigenous population hasn’t been killed directly. Instead, they’ve been driven off their land, directed into “enterprise zones” where they can engage in labor that serves the empire. ... The world on which this act takes place is one in which the government has demonstrated it’s ability to erase the local culture. Not only have the indigenous people been removed from their land, their cultural practices have been undercut by limits on important ceremonies. There has also been active cultural appropriation, in which the empire has replaced portions of the rituals of these “simple” local people. ... If all this sounds like what the United States did (and does) to Native Americas, it’s meant to. The forcing of people that were spread thinly across large areas into small industrial zones is also spot on to how colonialism was practiced in Africa and elsewhere. Colonialism serves those in power. Fascism maintains itself by removing any competitors. If religion or cultural traditions can be warped to serve the authoritarian regime, they’re supported. If not, they’re removed.

And there is the prison system.

Once in the prison, Andor learns that even the pretense of his sentence is not maintained. For both those who resist their captivity, and those who cooperate, the end result is the same — a lifetime of doing free labor for the empire; a crushing, mind-numbing, never ending production line in which they are all engaged in building what, pointedly, turn out to be fresh tools of oppression. It’s only here, in this final arc, that Andor steps back from his personal needs to realize that it’s not enough to hate the system. He has to take steps to end that system.

I saw a tweet by Mary Doherty a couple weeks ago mentioning an event important to LGBTQ history that happened 50 years ago. It’s an event I knew about, though it is good to get the background story and be reminded of its importance. The tweet linked to a news article. I decided to read the full article and was surprised it was dated May 2, 2022. The article is on NBC News and is by Jillian Eugenios. That historical event 50 years ago was when Dr. Henry Anonymous spoke to the American Psychiatric Association while wearing a Nixon mask, a wig, and a too big tux and using a microphone that disguised his voice. He began his speech by saying “I am a homosexual, I am a psychiatrist.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a guidebook for psychiatrists. When the first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Acceptable cures included chemical castration, electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy – yeah, severe treatments. A homosexual could be denied a mortgage and insurance, fired from a job, and institutionalized. Same-sex activities were criminialized. Activists were pressuring the APA to change – their refrain was “Stop talking about us and start talking to us!” They had stormed the APA conference in 1970 and 1971. So a panel was created for the 1972 conference. I had heard elsewhere that psychiatrists based their diagnosis on the number of gay men they saw who were in a bad mental place – not catching on the men didn’t want to be gay because of the extreme social pressure placed on them. Psychiatrists didn’t see the gay men who were content and well-adjusted and functioning just fine. That’s why they wanted the APA to talk to them. The organizers thought a gay psychiatrist would be appropriate for the panel. Only one member of the underground Gay-P-A agreed to participate, but only if disguised because he could lose his job. So Dr. John Fryer became Dr. Anonymous. His speech prompted homosexuality to be removed from the DSM in 1973. Declaring homosexuality was not a mental disorder, but just another variation in the spectrum of humanity, the rationalization for discrimination was removed. Bigotry couldn’t hide behind psychiatry. LGBTQ people felt freer in coming out. Anti sodomy laws began to be overturned. The speech by Dr. Anonymous is as important to LGBTQ history as the Stonewall riots.

The act or practice of grossly misleading someone

All this week the Marketplace Morning Report on NPR has been marking the 75th birthday of the transistor. The birth happened on Dec. 16, 1947 at Bell Labs in New Jersey. Yes, a great deal of modern technology is based on the transistor, which became the silicon chip – I’m using silicon chips as I type this. I heard the series in five minute segments. I believe here is the whole 25 minutes. As I scanned through Leah McElrath’s twitter feed yesterday I saw several tweets of accounts of journalists being suspended. Since each is an individual tweet and she didn’t gather them into a thread I don’t have something there I can link to. She’s still there – for now. As one who has been critical of Elon Musk she is aware her account may be next. Suspending journalists from Twitter is enough of a big deal that Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about it.

On Thursday night, Twitter—abruptly, and without notice or warning—began banning or permanently suspending the accounts of journalists. Those known to be affected so far span a wide variety of leading media platforms, including CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, as well as online platforms like substack. All that these writers appear to have in common is that they recently reported on stories connected to Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Yeah, so much for Musk being a free speech absolutist. A few days ago Kos of Kos wrote that Musk is making a stupid mistake. Who buys Teslas? Liberals. It certainly isn’t conservative who hate the idea of a car that doesn’t run on fossil fuels. Who is Musk denigrating as he opens Twitter to a far right free for all? Liberals. Yup, the favorability score for Teslas has been dropping and is now negative. And that favorability is dropping faster among Democrats. Not surprisingly, Tesla stock is about 42% of its value earlier this year. Tesla shareholders are not pleased. In a post from two weeks ago Dartagnan of the Kos community reported:

The numbers are now coming in. Elon Musk’s quest to turn his newly owned social media platform into a welcome haven for Nazis, bigots, misogynists, and hate groups—all cuddling together beneath the trademark Blue Bird and defiantly waving the flag of “free speech”—is proceeding exactly as almost everyone predicted.

Dartagnan quoted a report by Sheera Frengel and Kate Conger for the New York Times based on research done by several organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They added some numbers.

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day. Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day.

Twitter now seems to be the home of QAnon and Islamic State, among other bad actors. Dartagnan concluded:

Yes, there are ways to navigate around or ignore these scummy people but at some point, as Musk’s cesspool becomes more and more polluted, many will begin to ask themselves whether the benefits of using Twitter really outweigh the negatives.

Justine Musk, who web searches describe as Elon’s first wife (and sites will gladly share the full list of wives, girlfriends, and children), tweeted:

So let me get this straight. We are now supposed to step into the "marketplace of ideas" to debate + discuss if Hitler behaved poorly, or if women should be "raped + locked in cages"? Because these are conversations the culture needs to be having?

Back when I was in college – decades ago – I heard and mentioned in some class assignment that fusion energy would be a great thing in energy production. Unlike nuclear fission, fusion didn’t give off any pollutants. But that source of energy was still a few decades out. Lawrence Livermore National Lab made a big announcement this week of a milestone in fusion research. NPR reported they had achieved getting more energy out of fusion than the energy they used to make it happen. But then that report said they didn’t account for this energy need and for that one. So maybe that wasn’t the milestone. The US Department of Energy tweeted about the milestone, saying they had achieved fusion ignition. That is certainly a great accomplishment. That tweet led me to the press release put out by the lab. But commercially available energy from fusion is still a few decades out. April Siese of Kos reported renewable energy has reached an inflection point. An Energy Information Administration report says the US has 7.8 gigawatts of battery storage, expects to have another 1.4 GW online by the end of the year (in two weeks?), and a total of 20.8 GW of storage by the end of 2025. Battery storage is critical because solar panels produce nothing at night and wind turbines don’t spin when there is no wind. This big jump in storage is thanks to Biden and the Inflation Reduction Act he signed. Meteor Blades of Kos reported that in the Congress that begins in January there will be 149 Republicans who deny the science that says our climate is getting catastrophically warmer and human activity is the cause. That number is about 55% of all Republicans in Congress. It’s 110 in the House (19 of them newly elected) and 39 in the Senate (4 new).

It would be bad enough if all these lawmakers were merely fools. However, most of them know climatologists’ warnings aren’t fake news. This doesn’t stop them from continuing to regurgitate debunked propaganda that the fossil fuel industry has for four decades been paying shills to disinform the public about. Nor does it spur them to take legislative action to address what scientists say we must. They don’t care. And if fattening their wallet accompanies their not caring, so much the better.

In my opinion the situation is worse than them not caring – though that is still quite bad. I understand that for them a climate that wreaks havoc on those who aren’t them and their donors is a perfectly fine way to oppress people. Matt Wuerker of Politico tweeted a cartoon spoofing the announcement of fusion ignition. One scientist explains:

We took Elon’s ego and Trump’s narcissism and smashed them together ... It’s a bottomless source of energy!

Cleaning out browser tabs and sharing a couple of them. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, reported Merriam Webster reported its 2022 word of the year is gaslighting. The definition is: “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” The reason why the word was chosen is, “2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year.” In a time when a lot of politicians push fake news the interest in this word makes sense. Because I occasionally listen to the podcast Gaslit Nation I’ve known about this word for quite a while. Amazing Maps tweeted a map of obesity in North America. About 30% of Michigan’s residents are obese. The worst states are Alabama, Kentucky, and West Virginia, which are at least 40% obese. A swath in the middle of the country – Texas to Iowa – plus a few more are about 38% obese. The least obese in America are California, Colorado, and Connecticut at about 28% obese. Most of Canada is the same or better than the US, with British Columbia and Quebec under 20% obese. Mexico is about 36% obese.

In the name of tolerance we claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant

My Christmas concerts went well. Brother came and we had a good visit. And now back to blogging. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated Tuesday, December 6. I hope last week’s jump in the weekly peak of new cases per day was an anomaly. The peaks in the last few weeks are 1440, 1194, 1784, and 1312. So maybe it is. That high peak happened just after Thanksgiving, when people gathered together. The deaths per day over the last few weeks are in the 14-27 range, a bit higher than it was between May and September. The nasty guy is still there and is making it clear what his intentions are, not that we had any doubt. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy used his social media platform to complain again that the 2020 election was stolen. As part of that he wrote “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.” Yes, he is calling for ripping up the constitution and installing himself as dictator. Sumner also reported the general reaction is: Who cares what he says? Sumner wrote:

Trump so regularly says something absolutely vile which should be offensive to the sensibilities of anyone who cares about facts, laws, history, or democracy has left all his statements in a kind of odd limbo. On the one hand, a former leader of the nation calling for the overthrow of the current government and installation of himself as the head, while explicitly calling for the Constitution to be pitched, seems like textbook sedition. On the other hand, Trump is just such a repetitive and consistent asshole, that raising the stakes to tossing the Constitution on the bonfire of his vanity, seems like just another Saturday. ... However, there’s a huge danger in dismissing any of this as “oh, that’s just Trump. Ignore him.” Because no one has done more to normalize racism, misogyny, xenophobia, anti-science, anti-journalism, anti-facts language than Trump. Every time he speaks like this and it doesn’t generate a powerful backlash, Trump has succeeded in moving the line for “political speech” a little further toward having “Kill them all, let God sort them out” as the platform of the Republican Party.

Greg Dworkin of Kos tweeted:

People who grew up in Germany are much more attuned to the vibes of Trump's outrageous call for suspending parts of the Constitution.

Dworkin quoted a tweet from Ondine, who is German:

I feel like I’m in an alternate reality trying to shake people awake going THIS IS A BFD WE’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE THE TIME TO CRUSH IT IS NOW LATER IS TOO LATE and people going awww lil girl it won’t happen here because Reasons. Sigh.

Dworkin concluded:

on the one hand I don't think Trump is the political force he used to be on the other, any power he regains will be without restraint

Laura Clawson of Kos reported on the wimpy response by prominent Republicans and by the press. An example is Rep. David Joyce, who said he didn’t think the nasty guy would be able to get there, so it somehow doesn’t matter that if he does get there Joyce will support him. But context! – as if those words could be taken any other way. Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of the nasty guy writing on the Constitution, including crossing out the words “We the People.” An elephant behind him says, “When you’re finished, I’ll hold your sharpie.” Steve Benson, of the Arizona Mirror tweeted a cartoon of the nasty guy with a gun and the Constitution full of bullet holes. Sumner reported that lawyers of the nasty guy searched two more of his properties and declared they found no more classified document. Which should mean FBI agents should immediately go search those properties. By the time it took Sumner to write and post his article his source, the Washington Post, updated their article to say at least two more classified documents were found in a storage unit outside West Palm Springs. There are a lot more places that need to be searched. And by the FBI. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that on Monday the Supreme Court heard another case about LGBTQ bigotry. This one is this court’s version of the Colorado cake shop case of four years ago. It is one brought by a woman who is thinking about starting a website but hasn’t yet because she’d have to accommodate same-sex couples and doesn’t want to do that. It isn’t a case of a company that refused a business request by a same-sex couple. It’s a case brought by a business that doesn’t exist yet. Which means they aren’t a defendant yet, there is no evidence yet, no one has been harmed yet, and the Supremes should not have taken the case. But they did. This case, like the cake shop case, is brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom. To be clear, they’re all about the freedom to discriminate and not freedom from discrimination. McCarter reviewed some of the oral arguments. I’ll let you read it on your own. Though I will note, as reported by Rebekah Sager of Kos, that Justice Alito contributed a racist joke. Clawson reported that as one group of bigots were before the Supremes asking to be allowed to unleash their bigotry, another group of bigots were loudly complaining their bigotry was met with firm resistance. The Family Foundation of Virginia made a reservation for an event at Metzger’s Bar and Butchery in Richmond. The waitstaff at the restaurant figured out who these people are and told their management they refused to serve the bigots. So management canceled the reservation. Sheesh! Like they tell us about wedding cakes, wouldn’t they rather go to a restaurant that wants their business? Clawson wrote a summary of FFV’s position:

We should be able to demand service from waiters and bartenders whose basic humanity and rights we reject, even as Team Christian is off at the Supreme Court arguing for the constitutional right to discriminate against people based on who they are.

Clawson acquainted me with Popper’s Paradox: a tolerant society is maintained by refusing to privilege intolerance. The Wikipedia entry for the Paradox of Tolerance says in part:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. ... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

SemDem of the Kos community wrote about the various ways the states are undermining what this illegitimate Supreme Court is doing. The Supremes overturned Maine’s prohibition against giving tuition vouchers to religious schools. The Maine legislature responded by prohibiting vouchers to schools that discriminate. The Supremes approved the Texas law that allows anyone to sue a person involved in an abortion and, if successful, get $10,000. California responded with a law that says anyone can sue a gun dealer who sells to anyone under 21 years old and get $10,000. The law will, of course, be challenged. Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to hear how the Supremes will justify one and not the other. The Supremes overturned a New York law requiring extensive background checks and training before being issued a concealed carry gun permit. The ruling, written by Clarence Thomas, essentially says states cannot protect citizens from gun violence. There is an exception that guns can be banned in “historically sensitive places.” So New York greatly expanded its list of historically sensitive places. Florida passed a law to restore voting rights to felons who completed their sentences. Gov. DeathSantis and the Republican legislature created an opaque system that demanded payment of costs before restoring voting rights. A lower court said that’s an unconstitutional pay-to-vote system. The Supremes sided with DeathSantis. So four counties created “rocket dockets” to waive fines and fees en masse. The Supremes said abortion rights are up to the states. Several states responded by affirming that right and a few of them are working out methods of meeting abortion care needs of pregnant people in red states. The Supremes have heard a case pushing the idea that legislatures can make rules for federal elections without regard to their own state’s citizens, laws, courts, or constitution. A decision is expected by the end of June. If, as many fear, the Court buys into this far right idea, SemDem proposes a way to fight back. States in Republican control are already gerrymandered to the max. But the number of states firmly under Dem control has increased. These states try to play fair. But they could put the House firmly in Dem control by just as vigorously gerrymandering for a blue advantage. Speaking of DeathSantis, Sager reported he suspended a Democratic state attorney for being a “woke idealogue.” That attorney sued to get his job back. Ryan Newman, general counsel for DeathSantis, was asked to define “woke.” After some prodding he said, “it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” So DeathSantis is suspending people for acknowledging and wanting to address the systemic injustices in Florida. DeathSantis is also doing as much political work as he can to increase and perpetuate the systemic injustices in Florida. An example of that work was reported by Walter Einenkel of Kos. The Florida State Board of Education rescinded its protections for trans students. That political mood allowed a couple of newly elected MAGA types, plus an existing member, to take over the Brevard County School Board. They fired the current superintendent and pushed through anti-trans rules. Then, wrote Einenkel,

Just a few days later, the new School Board Chairman, Matt Susin, stood alongside Sheriff Wayne Ivey, State Attorney Phil Archer, and a union rep for school staff, Dolores Varney, in front of the Brevard County Jail in Sharpes to tell everyone, on camera, that they would be imposing the “most prolific school discipline policy this district has ever had.” In front of a jail. The statements made were vague and threatening and really offered up zero concrete ideas on how anything they were going to do would be beneficial to education in Florida’s Brevard County. Sheriff Ivey, probably the most excited person on Earth about this announcement, couldn’t control himself, saying that the big problem in schools today is that kids aren’t as terrified for their well-being like Sheriff Ivey would like them to be.

Of course, no media was invited to that display. So no one was there to ask the important question why a statement about education was being made by law enforcement in front of a jail.

Certain political beliefs are treated as interchangeable with child abuse

My Friday evening movie, my second of the Freep Film Fest, was Gradually, Then Suddenly, about Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy. I streamed it from home. As I watched I took a page of notes. Here’s the basics of the story. Back in 2013-14 I wrote about the bankruptcy as it happened, perhaps a dozen posts. I also wrote about it in 2018 after seeing the Freep Film Fest movie Beauty and Ruin about the history of the Detroit Institute of Arts and how it got caught up in the bankruptcy proceedings. This movie focuses on why the bankruptcy happened and the issues around it resolution. Leading up to 2013 Detroit was $18.5 billion in debt. This was the largest city bankruptcy. All city services had been cut back due to a lack of money. Many street lights were out. There were huge numbers of arsons and homicides. Bus service was sporadic. If one called the police it might be an hour before they arrived – if they came at all. The city and its residents were in bad shape. Detroit and Michigan are highly racist. They’re not as bad as the South – here black people can vote – but there is still a lot of oppression. In the 1950 census the Detroit population was 1.8 million. At the time of the bankruptcy it was about 0.7 million. Freeways that were built in the late 1950s made white flight easier. Over the decades the middle class black people fled as well. That meant a great deal of the Detroit population was poor. The tax base dropped. And the city government budget took a big hit. There was also an adversarial relationship between Detroit and the state legislature. There is a law that says the state is to share revenue with cities with declining population to prevent them from spiraling into decline. But the state was increasingly reluctant to approve all of that money. Yes, that’s racism. Detroit’s first black mayor was elected in 1973. Part of the bad relationship was because white people in Lansing were annoyed with the audacity that black people wanted to govern themselves, so reduced payments to Detroit and other black majority cities. In a way that was to show black people couldn’t govern themselves. For a good long time Detroit was essentially a one industry town. The Detroit Three automakers employed a large part of the city’s (and region’s) population. But they tended to squabble amongst themselves for market share while ignoring the gains Toyota and other foreign brands were making. The Detroit Three had to cut costs and shrink their workforces. The Great Recession sent GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009. (Chrysler had several partners and name changes over the years and I don’t remember which name it held in 2009.) The woes of the auto industry made Detroit’s problems worse. By 2008 Detroit was pretty much out of money. The city fell way behind in making pension fund payments. The mortgage crisis that brought on the Great Recession hit Detroit especially hard. And the problems were made much worse. Detroit wasn’t the only Michigan city with a financial mess. The legislature came up with an Emergency Manager law, which swept aside the democratically elected city government and put in someone with sweeping powers to tear up existing labor contracts. Essentially a dictator. Yeah, the state refused to keep up the revenue sharing and when, because of that, the city couldn’t keep up the state took it over. In 2012 Michigan residents gathered enough signatures to put overturning the EM law on the ballot. The proposal won – and the lame-duck legislature promptly reinstated something very similar with a provision that prevented citizens from overturning it. The EM law was passed because city governments could not balance the books. Sheila Cockerel, who was on the Detroit City Council, said that was true. They were too beholden to political supporters. They spent too much, promised too much, and borrowed too much (though see above about the state withholding payment). I think it was sometime between 2008 and 2012 the city, in a desperate move, did some sort of pension bond swap. The essentially bet that the bond market would move in one direction. And it moved in the other. They lost their bet. Part of this is amazing – Detroit obviously was in debt and didn’t have enough money coming in to cover expenses – and yet institutions were still willing to lend it money with no obvious way for it to be paid back. In one of my previous posts I wondered (based on various presentations I had attended at the time) if those institutions could be convicted of fraud for misrepresenting the deal. Alas, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t pursued. This makes me think the institutions were working towards a scheme to suck money out of black people to give it to white people – which is what happened. Perhaps to them it was worth several million (or billion) to make the black people of Detroit even more impoverished. It’s a supremacist thing. The city owed money to two primary groups, the financial institutions and the retired city workers on pension. Even though the state constitution said pensions were sacrosanct, it also said they were contracted. And courts said that contracts could be voided, which meant pensions could be cut. That put the pensioners, mostly black and for whom the loss of a pension could mean life or death, up against big bankers, who were rich, mostly white, and for whom the loss of a few millions, maybe billions, wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference in their solvency and way of life. The conflict between pensioner and bank came down to the debt owed to the banks was secured and the money owed to pensioners was unsecured. And law puts secured debt first. This also annoys me because the banks – the financial institutions – knew the bet was risky. And they knew their money would be valued as more important than human lives. The story turned to the city’s assets. There were only two worth enough to matter. One was the water system. Detroit owned it, though it served the entire metro region and beyond. It also needed a great deal of repair and upgrading. The only way to pay for improvements was to raise rates and many Detroiters already had problems paying their water bill. It wouldn’t help pay the banks. However, the bankruptcy resulted in more regional representation on the water department’s board. The other big asset was the Detroit Institute of Arts. Yes, owned by the city. It’s collection was assembled at a time when Detroit had a lot of cash. Even though museums follow a code of not selling their art because it could end up in private collections and removed from public view, the pressure was on and appraisers came for a look. Soon the way out of bankruptcy was framed as pensioners v. art. Of course, many pensioners said sell the art. But as the earlier movie about the DIA stated, the money from the sale of the art would have not gone to the pensioners, it would have gone to the banks. Some people rightly framed the conflict between pensioners and the banks, but it wasn’t the usual view. A Grand Bargain began to shape up. Community foundations were urged to “buy” the DIA and its art, though the value they contributed was far from the value of the collection. Once that was mostly in place the city went to Lansing and pressured the legislature for a match. One of the arguments was this deal would be less than what the state would pay out in supplemental assistance to help all of those who become impoverished. There was a lot of resistance, but the money was approved. Then attention turned to the pensioners. Though the city was being run by an unelected administrator the pensioners voted on whether to accept their part of the deal. They were told their pensions would be cut and they would lose health insurance, but this is the deal we have and if you reject it any future deal will be worse for you. They approved it. And the deal was done. As for the investors, some got a quarter of what they were owed, others got a tenth. Thankfully, the deal included enough money for the city to restore and upgrade services. The city’s downtown and midtown areas are thriving, though many neighborhoods have seen little improvement. And the city’s finances are stable. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported the library board of Enid, Oklahoma has created a policy of not making exhibits about sex, sexual perversion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and several other categories related to sex. For now, the books can stay on the shelves, but they can’t be highlighted. That has meant the cancellation of two programs. One is the Shameless Romance book discussion club. The other is Sexual Assault Awareness, which sounds important. Displays for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day might be canceled. The language the library adopted is directly from a bill introduced in the Oklahoma legislature that is currently stalled. I’ve written that the library in Llano County, Texas has pulled books from shelves. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported several citizens filed a lawsuit against several county commissioners, the library system director, some library board members, and a county judge.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs tried to check out several books that had been removed from the system and were denied access to those texts. They believe their constitutional rights have been violated because public officials censored the books based on their content. They also believe the public officials did not give proper notice or opportunity for the community to comment on the decision. “When government actors target public library books because they disagree with and intend to suppress the ideas contained therein,” the lawsuit states in part. “It jeopardizes the freedoms of everyone.” Rather brilliantly, the suit also points out public libraries are not places of government “indoctrination” where people in power can “spoon-feed one-sided information” and dictate what people are allowed to read and discover.

I had mentioned Florida is including math books in its list of books to be banned. Higgins explained a bit more.

We now have a few examples from math textbooks that allegedly include references to CRT and social-emotional learning (SEL), as reported by CNN. Social-emotional learning, as some background, helps students learn how to solve problems and make decisions while managing their emotions and using empathy. Sadly, it’s easy to see why conservatives would want to stomp this sort of learning out—imagine if their minions developed a hint of empathy for the marginalized people they love to hate? Suddenly they’d have to work a lot harder to get votes. In a more advanced application, social-emotional learning is valuable for adults, too, when it comes to us understanding how and why we engage with others (as well as ourselves) in various situations at home, work, or with friends. For white people like myself, for example, this could mean an opportunity to identify and take accountability for microaggressions or racial bias. ... One example shared by the Times includes a word problem where, in addition to the obvious math, students are able to learn how to support a friend who is scared about crossing a bridge in the jungle. Students learn that they can help the hypothetical friend by building up their confidence and supporting them, which is probably why conservatives are upset about it. ... Ah, yes, because nothing distracts from learning like … developing basic social skills, compassion, and real-world problem-solving. Guess kids should go back to copying multiplication tables on the blackboard and call it a day?

Clawson discussed what Christopher Rufo has been up to. He’s the guy who laid out the plans for the GOP to turn Critical Race Theory into a battle cry. His latest efforts are to turn “grooming” into a toxic accusation against Disney (for opposing Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law) and anyone else he can figure out how to tar it with. And, like a Bond villain, he likes to explain what he’s doing. For his efforts he got a nice puff piece at the New York Times.

But as [Don] Moynihan, a political scientist at Georgetown University, wrote at his Substack, it goes deeper. In Rufo’s usage, “this language is largely not about sexual abuse of children. Rufo is much more likely to describe ‘grooming’ in the context of kids being exposed to ideas he dislikes rather than actual sexual abuse. In other words, sharing certain political beliefs — usually centered around recognizing the status of historically marginalized groups — are treated as interchangeable with child abuse, its perpetrators akin to child abusers.” “The reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues,” Rufo told the Times. In translation: He thinks he can ride anti-LGBTQ bigotry even further than racism. ... Rufo is part of a broader Republican movement to end public education, something he’s strategically laying the groundwork for with each new campaign he wages. CRT, grooming, social-emotional learning—all of these are buzzwords intended to weaken support for public education. Disney came into it because of the company’s opposition to the Florida Don’t Say Gay law banning the teaching of anything that might imply to children that LGBTQ people are acceptable members of their communities. Rufo laid out his approach in an April speech at Hillsdale College, titled “Laying Siege to the Institutions.” In it, he called for a “narrative and symbolic war against companies like Disney” in which “You have to be very aggressive. You have to fight on terms that you define.” On schools, he was explicit: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

Prairie Pilot of the Kos community proposed ways to diffuse the challenge that someone is a “groomer.” One could respond with sentences such as:

I want to groom the children of our country to build on this nation’s promises of equality and justice.

Some of the commenter are worried this will backfire. The word may already be too poisoned with its association with anti-LGBT hatred. Smiff added:

I worry that the R’s will just spam ads out of clips of Dems saying “I want to groom our children…” and say “See? I told you so...”

Chepe added an alternate use:

I’ve started talking about “Christian groomers” trying to inculcate hatred, ignorance, and denial of reality into unsuspecting children.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. Here’s a bit of it:

If you think Florida is overreacting now, just wait until they find out that math can be non-binary. —Trevor Noah

When Disney began to build Disney World in Florida, all those decades ago they worked out with the state what is known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Over the land it owned (and it looks like over some of the surrounding neighborhoods) Disney is its own local government. It provides its own fire service and sewer treatment. In exchange Disney does not pay local property taxes. Because Disney is now working against a favorite Republican project, that Don’t Say Gay law, there is now an effort to overturn that Reedy Creek agreement. Hunter of Kos reported that Disney isn’t worried. State law says the District cannot be dissolved if there are outstanding bond debts – and there are, about a $1 billion worth. So the state, or maybe Orange County, would have to take over that debt – causing a steep rise in local taxes. That would be a big financial gift to Disney. Another barrier is the county would also have to pay for fire and sewer service. This “retaliation” looks pretty good from Disney’s point of view.

Are minorities treated badly here or something?

My Sunday movie was Circus Boy. This is a documentary, less than an hour long, of one day in the life. Tom and Mike are a married gay couple in Peterborough, Ontario. Tom is an instructor at the Academy of Circus Arts. Ethan started in gymnastics, then went on to the Circus Academy. Tom was Ethan’s instructor, then his mentor, then his second dad (with Mike as a third) when Ethan moved in. On this day in 2019 Tom drives to the Toronto airport to pick up his mother (they never say where she lives – far enough away she needs to fly to get there). That evening Tom and Ethan are to do a performance for Mom’s approval. I didn’t think that Ethan should need to do something to win her approval. Fortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. Through the day Tom explains to Mom how Ethan came into his life. Later, Mom talks to Ethan’s mother to hear that side and Ethan’s mom heartily approves of these men providing extra father figures for her son. We see Ethan practice on the trampoline and spin a fire baton (unlit). Where Tom and Ethan do best is with the cyr wheel. It is a tube bent in a circle with a diameter larger than they are tall. They step on it and reach up and grab with their hands. Then with their balance they let it roll and spin, which means sometimes they’re upside down. On Sunday I switched from the Firefox web browser to the Vivaldi browser. For more than a year Firefox had been doing a lot of misfiring – pages are displayed blank. Sometimes I could display the page in another tab. And sometimes I had to shut Firefox down, wait for all its subprocesses to close (which could take a whole minute) and try again. I got tired of it happening so frequently. Mozilla, who creates Firefox, doesn’t have a help desk. I tried using their forum and was told I needed to get rid of extensions (I didn’t have any), switch to safe mode (which didn’t make any difference), and buy a new mouse (which I eventually did). None of that fixed the problem and I didn’t want to battle my way through anymore. So I put up with the misfires until I got tired of them and took the time to research a replacement. So, on to Vivaldi. It’s rather nice to have a built in ad-blocker. I mentioned frequently that posts I want to discuss can stay in my browser tabs for months. Switching to Vivaldi included opening up each tab in Firefox and copying the address to a new tab in Vivaldi (and along the way deciding not to copy a few). Firefox displays only so many tabs, then allows one to scroll the tab bar side to side. Vivaldi doesn’t do that. Instead, it just makes each tab smaller. Which meant I soon had to use the feature of tab stacking. My stack of posts I want to write about now has 41 entries in it (at least now I have a count). Yeah, my attempts to delete old tabs didn’t work so well. That stack of tabs will be hard to work through because nearly every day I tend to accumulate enough things to write about that day. So I’ll see how Vivaldi meets my needs and what adjustments to setting I need to make. One problem to handle is making Vivaldi the default browser. At the moment that isn’t taking. John Stoehr and his Editorial Board talked to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. The topic was the Republican attempts to whitewash the J6 insurrection and the rhetorical tricks they use to do it. Those tricks are common enough they are named and studied: Denial that it happened – they were just tourists, they were peaceful. Differentiation – yeah, it happened, but it isn’t what you think. They were really antifa. See also every conspiracy theory. Bolstering – people love the nasty guy (without defining that “people” was a small percent of the population), patriots loved what happened (with a strange definition of “patriot”). Transcendence – look at the bigger picture, this is a small incident in the life of a great president. Eulogistic covering – something negative is covered by something positive. In the Capitol attack there were well-trained paramilitary operatives covered by ordinary people expressing free speech rights. Mercieca discussed wedge issues. There are a lot of things that we believe in common. A wedge is to take the things that we don’t have in common and amplify them.

The first example that comes to mind is the spectacle of “critical race theory” and what we teach our children. I have a school-aged kid and I can tell you that everyone is unhappy with the schools, including the people who work in them. It’s a hard job! And parents are so concerned about their kids. But we don’t fund our schools and our classrooms are overcrowded and kids are difficult to control and the whole thing is a mess and frustrating. But we don’t talk about it from that perspective. Instead, the right has riled up parents about “crt.” We could have a serious conversation about what’s not working well in our schools, what our kids need, how to fund that kind of education and how to produce really smart, happy kids, but instead we have a pro/con moral panic about something that isn’t even real. That’s what I’d call a wedge being used to divide people.

Stoehr concluded with a discussion of truth:

I think we’d really rather know than not know to face reality. It’s Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. We’re deluded by shadows. If we learn that truth, it hurts us. When we try to tell others about the delusion, they try to hurt us. It’s easier to pretend you don’t know about the delusion. But knowing is powerful. If you can know about the delusion, you can fix it. If you can see, it doesn’t have power over you. I don’t think we want to feel helpless. So you have to give people the truth in a way that makes them feel powerful and in control. So much of our political discourse is about disempowering people.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Daily Kos discussed a study about the large number of people from Brevard County, Florida who were arrested as part of the Capitol attack. The study was done by Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and reported in The Atlantic. Wrote Pennyfarthing:

Pape and his researchers ran a few statistical analyses to help predict which regions were most likely to produce an insurrectionist, but most of the explanations they floated failed to pan out. Counties Trump won were actually less likely to breed an insurrectionist, and rural counties were also underrepresented. There also was no correlation between falling incomes and the number of MAGA coup participants a county produced. But in counties where white people were losing demographic ground, they apparently freaked. ... To paraphrase a popular meme, why would white people worry about becoming a minority in this country? Are minorities treated badly here or something? ... So we have some solid answers now. Why are so many people freaked out about immigration in a country that faces a long-term labor shortage? Racism. Why do people so easily accept that election fraud occurred in heavily Black areas such as Wayne County, Michigan; Fulton County, Georgia; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania? Racism. Why did a bigoted, bloviating incompetent receive 74 million votes for president, and why were people willing to give up their own safety and freedom to keep that guy in power? Racism. They think they’re being “replaced,” and after a lifetime of privilege, it’s just not fair.

My definition of privilege is I’m allowed to do something that I won’t let you do, which shows I’m higher in the social hierarchy. Mary Tracy tweeted, “World’s greatest democracy” and quoted:

Princeton University study: Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law. Gilens & Page found that the number of Americans for or against any idea has no impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law. “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-signficant impact upon public policy.” – Gilens & Page, Perspectives in Politics

Nicholas Grossman, professor of International Relations at University of Illinois, quoted a tweet from Elise Hu about Steve Bannon recruiting people who don’t believe in democracy to serve as municipal poll workers. Grossman added:

Overgeneralizing here, but in general, the right is better at recognizing that power comes from institutions and force (or the threat of force), while the left overrates how much power comes from word choice, symbols, chastisement, and wanting it badly enough.

I had understood “anarchy” to mean a lawless, uncontrollable, chaotic, and dangerous situations or people. I even checked the definition online. The words and phrases they used were: social disorder due to the absence of government control, lack of obedience to authority, confusion and disorder. Leah McElrath tweeted a different way of looking at it.

There is NO connection between anarchism and white supremacy. (I’d argue they are antithetical to one another.) And anarchy isn’t about violence. It’s about order without hierarchy.

So a society or a government that is very much into maintaining the social hierarchy, such as here in America, someone or a group (including myself) that is working towards a society without hierarchy would look like the absence of control, lack of obedience, and confusion and disorder. That definition depends on “order” being equivalent to the hierarchy. I’m not invested in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin being the best known, and the more I hear about it the less I’m inclined to do so. That they are used many times to launder money is not a recommendation. There is a process called cryptocurrency mining. Since these currencies don’t have any physical manifestation no one has an actual shovel somewhere digging for minerals. This mining has to do with the way the various currencies are defined and recorded as who owns what. That recording is done in “blockchains.” The “mining” is done by computers solving really big equations. The more cryptocurrency there is the more complicated these equations get and the harder they are to solve. Which gets us to this post by Alexandra Martinez for Kos Prism. She reported that currency mining companies are buying up decommissioned power plants and turning them on for the sole purpose of powering thousands of computers to do that mining. This industry now has a huge carbon footprint and is dumping huge amounts of water used for cooling back into the environment. The costs to the environment, including global warming, are huge. Some of these companies say they are buying carbon offsets, but those trees are planted elsewhere. Commenter Nimblewill quoted from a local news source that currency mining is loud. Nearby residents are complaining. Nimblewill also noted that this is electricity that is squandered, that could be used more productively. Leilani Münter linked to a tweet by Digiconomist and paraphrased:

In 2021, Bitcoin consumed so much energy that it emitted more CO2 emissions than have been saved globally by electric cars. The carbon footprint of just one Bitcoin transaction is equal to the carbon footprint of almost 1.5 million VISA transactions.

On to issues related to the traditional definition of mining. Greg Sargent, in a tweeted promotion to one of his articles in the Washington Post, wrote:

A big deal: The coal miners' union just ratcheted up pressure on Manchin to support BBB. This is a seminal moment: The divergence in interests between workers and mine owners who oppose BBB has been exposed. Manchin must choose one or the other. Mine owners are now attacking the mine workers for supporting BBB. The owners explicitly argue that BBB would transition to clean energy too quickly! This perfectly shows that BBB is in workers' interests and against owners' interests. Remember when Hillary [Clinton] committed the "gaffe" of saying we'd have to transition coal workers to renewable jobs? Now the mine workers' union supports BBB in large part because it would aid that transition, blowing up years of mythologizing about all this. ... Manchin must choose.

Alas, I have a pretty good idea which way he’ll choose. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Manchin’s Democratic colleagues are publicly losing patience with his obstinance. They complain that many times they feel they are reaching an agreement and the next day they start again from scratch. There are some who believe Manchin is still working towards some sort of deal. Others are beginning to see what Manchin is doing is making sure a deal never happens. A few days ago I wrote that Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company that was in charge of the Arizona fraudit was facing a fine. Pennyfarthing has a few more details. The fine is because a judge ordered the company to turn over a set of documents. The company refused. A fine of $50K a day was added. They still refused. Now between the accumulated fine and other obligations the company is $2 million in debt. Add in various reports on how badly they handled the ballot recount. And Cyber Ninjas has released its employees and closed its doors. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, wrote a bit between a couple quotes that is similar to something I said recently:

There is a difference between individual risk (lower because of decreased virulence relative to Delta) and community risk (high with Omicron because of transmissibility and previous strain on health care/hospitals). That’s why “milder” ≠ “mild”.

Kelly Hayes tweeted:

They aren't saying: Spread is inevitable, so we need to protect the vulnerable, make healthcare and testing free, and make long term plans to address waves of long COVID. They're saying: Spread is inevitable, so get back to work and be glad that it's mostly disabled people dying.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on another way to tell how deadly this pandemic has been. We may not get accurate stats from various Republican governors intent on hiding the severity of the pandemic. But there is another measure they have no influence over.

Scott Davison is the CEO of OneAmerica, an Indianapolis-based life insurance company founded in the 19th century. To start the new year, Davison told the audience of an online news conference that “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business—not just at OneAmerica. The data is consistent across every player in that business.” According to Davidson, the third and fourth quarters of this past year saw death rates “up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic.” Even more distressing, explains Davison, is that this is not some demographic anomaly with the eldest members of our society passing on. The 40% rise in death rates is consistent for working-class folks 18 to 64-years-old.

Einenkel added a way of explaining what life insurance is all about:

Comedian Greg Fitzsimmons once told a joke that the strange relationship a consumer has with life insurance can be summed up as the consumer placing a bunch of money on a table and saying, “I bet you I die this year,” and the insurance company picking up the money, counting it, and saying “We bet you don’t.” Life insurance companies do not care about your feelings. People either die or they don’t. Different groups of people have higher mortality rates for a variety of reasons, and life insurance companies don’t particularly care what those reasons are—they just need to know whether they can bet on you to pay them more money than they will owe you when you are no longer around. It is as simple as that.

I remember when the word “meme” meant “a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.” By “item” people usually meant “idea.” But the internet came along and a new meaning was added: “a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.” Of course, over the last year there have been a huge number of memes that Kos of Kos has encountered in writing his Anti-Vaxx Cronicles. So he thought it was time to put together a bunch of pro-vaxx memes. An example is Jesus doing a facepalm with the words: “I was crucified to save humanity but you won’t even wear a mask.” And one from Middle Age Riot:

Evangelicals: “God will provide.” If God didn’t provide you with common sense, basic human empathy, or half a brain, what makes you think he’ll provide anything else?

And many more to enjoy, including in the comments. Such as, “Nobody is trying to shove a vaccine down your throat. However, we do have this endotracheal tube ...”

The oppressor is really the victim

I downloaded the latest Michigan coronavirus data today. Several days earlier this month the state has reached or passed 6000 new cases per day. I had been used to seeing a large hill of cases and deaths in March and April. But as the upward scale of my charts is adjusted for the latest highs the hill last spring now looks rather small. We’re now at four times the cases per day as we were when the first lockdown happened. Deaths per day has risen to 50 over the last week, double what it was a month ago, though still a third of what it was in April and well below what the current cases per day might indicate. I get the data from here. Another of the law firms representing the nasty guy in his post election lawsuits has withdrawn, reported Joan McCarter of Daily Kos. This time the suits are in Pennsylvania. The lawyers said the campaign didn’t provide any evidence and didn’t justify why they needed to intrude on the state’s sovereignty. Earlier this week a law firm in Arizona withdrew. The had dealt with a case in Maricopa County, where there was seven hours of testimony that would affect 191 votes in a county where Biden is ahead by 45,000 votes. Former Ambassador Susan Rice has worked through three presidential transitions, the last from Obama to the nasty guy. She wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times about the danger of Biden not getting the top intelligence briefings. The incoming guy needs to know the various challenges and threats around the world and what the departing administration has been doing about them. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed Rice’s article (I didn’t read it directly). Then Dartagnan proposed another reason why Biden isn’t getting briefings. When Biden’s team does get access, Dartagnan wrote, …

they are going to be appalled at the degree of inaction and wholesale lack of any efforts whatsoever to address these challenges. They will find instead a network of utter incompetence and indifference to planning, strategy or policy, staggering in its depth, and the Trump people know this. They will find security threats and intel festering, ignored, or shunted aside in favor of groveling to Trump’s every chimerical whim. They will find communications from our overseas allies to have shriveled into nothingness, and our intelligence services put at risk, if not wholly ignored. They will find corruption, graft, kickbacks, and politicization to have completely replaced national security policy.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito confirmed what we knew about him when he gave a speech at the highly conservative Federalist Society (the group that chose Amy Coney Barrett for us) a few days ago. Yeah, we knew this, but sometimes we let justices hide behind a mask of impartiality. This speech has been called the most political speech by a justice in recent time. Kerry Eleveld of Kos says the mask is off. Alito grumbled that he and fellow conservatives are suffering grievous persecution at the hands of liberals, Democrats, and even fellow justices. Eleveld wrote:

Now there's some pretty audacious privilege at work after four years in which white supremacy was culturally mainstreamed by an administration that sought to elevate it in both policy and rhetoric.

The first attack was against marriage equality. Somehow there’s no problem when a same-sex couple is discriminated against by a cake shop. He said there’s no harm because the couple got a cake elsewhere. But religious liberty (including the liberty to discriminate) must be protected. The oppressor is really the victim, he claims. Alito saw that with the legalization of same-sex marriage conservatives would be able to express their beliefs only in the recesses of their homes. Except Alito didn’t supply evidence that bigoted speech has been limited in the last five years. Eleveld mentioned some other topics:

But Alito's pro-discrimination advocacy wasn't his only partisan play. He also decried any future efforts by congressional Democrats to limit the court's right-wing reign over a center-left country, comparing it to autocratic intimidation. … Perhaps fittingly, Alito also directed a good portion of his speech at skewering current public policies intended to limit spread of the coronavirus. "The pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty," he said. "We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020."

Alito’s liberty is more important than my life. Got it. Though it was already obvious he didn’t care for anyone other than himself and fellow straight white Christian males. Rev. Dr. William Barber tweeted:

Why are Democrats talking about compromise & moving to the center with Mitch McConnell, who has never compromised with them? The only center Dems should move to is the moral center of policies that establish justice. Democrats will have the House, the presidency, and a majority of Americans. Stop talking about compromise and lay out a comprehensive vision for binding the wounds of the nation. Help Americans see how extreme McConnell’s obstruction is.

Sharon Sikala tweeted an image from Ridin’ with Biden that says:

How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb? None. Trump just SAYS it’s fixed and the rest of them sit in the dark and applaud.

Who but a demon?

We’ve seen this kind of thing before – the people get fed up with GOP policies and elect a Democrat to one job or another. The GOP legislature responds by stripping some or all of the power of that job. Indiana (when the vice nasty guy was governor there) did it to the statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction. Wisconsin did it to the governor.

And now the GOP is considering the idea of doing it to the newly elected Democratic governor of Kentucky. This governor-elect is Andy Beshear, who was in the news a lot in November because he won by a small margin and the GOP incumbent who got booted tried to get the GOP legislature to make trouble.

Stephen Wolf of the Daily Kos Elections staff reports the GOP is starting small. The bill is limited to the state Department of Transportation and would mean the Secretary of Transportation is the only cabinet position requiring Senate confirmation. That hands a key post to corporate interests. There are enough Republicans in the legislature they could overturn Beshear’s veto.

These schemes amount to a refusal on the part of Republicans to acknowledge that Democrats are a legitimate opposition party entitled to govern when they win elections.

This is an ominous trend, and one that could rear its head at a level far above state politics. Prior to the 2016 elections, Donald Trump refused to say he would honor the results if he lost, and ever since, he’s repeatedly claimed without any evidence that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote. The GOP establishment has given its full support to these power grabs in the states. They could culminate in Trump rejecting a legitimate election loss and refusing to leave office next year—a prospect that Americans must be prepared for.

Walter Shaub is a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics. He served under Obama, but shortly after the nasty guy took office he resigned saying he could do no more to curb the ethical violations within the nasty guy administration.

Shaub posted a long Twitter thread outlining 39 unethical things the nasty guy has done and which the GOP is permitting. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos lists them all. I’ll just list a few:

* Soliciting foreign attacks on our elections.
* Refusing to build defenses against interference in our elections.
* Refusing to comply with Congressional oversight.
* Firing the heads of the government’s top law enforcement agencies for allowing investigations of the president.
* Abandoning steadfast allies without warning Congress.
* Relentlessly attacking the free press.
* Misusing the security clearance process to benefit his children and target enemies.
* Accusing members of Congress of treason for conducting oversight.
* Hosting foreign leaders at his private businesses.
* Supporting authoritarian leaders and undermining NATO.

Shaub concludes:

None of the Republican Senators defending Trump could say with a straight face that they would tolerate a Democratic president doing the same thing. But, given this dangerous precedent, they may have no choice if they ever lose control of the Senate. Is that what they want?
...
At this point, I would remind these unpatriotic Senators of the line ‘you have a republic if you can keep it,’ but a variation on this line may soon be more apt when Trump redoubles his attack on our election: You have a republic, if you can call this a republic.

Contrast that with this. Georgia Logothetis is part of the Daily Kos team that does a regular roundup of what pundits are saying.

From Dana Milbank of the Washington Post:

On Fox News on Sunday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry reported that he told Trump he was God’s choice: “I said, 'Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, 'You were.’”

Who but a demon could vote to impeach God’s chosen one?

The surest way to make a climate-change denier even more aggressive in his denial is to present him with more science. Likewise, presenting Trump supporters with evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing only makes them more defiant of the demons doing the presenting.

Pete Wehner of The Atlantic adds:

Just ask yourself where this game ends. ... Are we supposed to believe that Adam Schiff’s words during the impeachment inquiry are not his own but those of demons in disguise? Were the testimonies of Ambassador Bill Taylor, Fiona Hill, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman truthful accounts offered by admirable public servants that badly hurt the president’s credibility—or the result of demonic powers?

Chaos and inertia

Today was the first big snowfall of the season, early for these parts. Close to 4 inches came down over the day. I canceled this evenings bell rehearsal. I did my shoveling this evening in the dark – show didn’t stop falling until 8:00 and the sun went down at 5:15. This was wet, heavy snow. It stuck to the shovel and I had to whack it after every scoop to get the snow to fall off.



Sarah Kendzzior, who studies authoritarian regimes tweeted a quote from an interview she did with Boulevard Magazine. She talked to dissidents in places like Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgystan.

They talk about this monotony, this constant combination of chaos and inertia. Things are corrupt, and there’s a mindboggling, horrific acts of corruption and abuse going on, on a daily basis. And at the same time, nothing changes. So you’re in a state of shock, but you’re also in a state of, not quite resignation, but you come to expect it.

Kendzior sees signs of that in America.



Hunter of Daily Kos is concerned about the nasty guy’s Twitter feed. Part one of the problem is he is indifferent to whether whatever he sees is true. Part two is that he consults his Twitter feed rather than actual advisors who know stuff.

Part three – and this is the scary one – is if you want to influence the nasty guy, tweet at him. There are lots of people, especially at Fox News and alarmingly from other countries, who elevate conspiracy theories known to be false to make sure the nasty guy sees them and is influenced by them. These people are engaging in acts of propaganda for their own gain that will harm America. They’re doing it for the same reasons despotic regimes do it.



The nasty guy administration instituted a “conscience rule” that tells health care providers that their conscience is more important than their patient’s health or life. Feel that providing birth control or vaccinations or gender affirming surgery is against your morals or religion, just say your conscience prevents you from doing that medical procedure. The nasty guy administration will hold billions in funding from health care providers if they don’t allow these objections.

Thankfully, Judge Paul Engelmayer, a federal judge in Manhattan has declared the rule to be unconstitutional.



Meteor Blades of Daily Kos shares a little bit of history of racism offered by Joseph Thompson, professor of history at Mississippi State University. President Roosevelt signed the GI bill into law in 1944. In the years after WWII it allowed huge numbers of veterans to take advantage of free college education.

Black veterans saw the race free text spelling out the qualifications and were hopeful. Their hopes went unfulfilled because:

* While white universities had the resources to expand to accommodate the increased numbers of students, the historically black universities did not.

* Black veterans had a much higher rate of not finishing high school.

* The funds to attend college were approved by the local Veterans Administration office – where racist white officials could deny the funds.



Rich people are getting nervous about Elizabeth Warren’s proposals to tax them. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos says they’re not yet to the point of pumping money to a Democratic competitor or the nasty guy. However, wealth managers are doing brisk business holding discussions with those with more than $50 million about steps they might take to avoid paying the tax. Will a person with $60 million really miss $200,000?



I mentioned before that a Democrat won the governorship in Kentucky by less than 5,200 votes. I had also mentioned that Matt Bevin, the Republican who lost, hasn’t conceded, has asked for a recanvass, and talked about using a law (last used in 1899) that allows a candidate to “contest” the results of an election (proof optional) and have the GOP majority legislature choose the next governor.

It is good to hear, as the Daily Kos election team wrote, that Senate President Robert Stivers got such a massive outcry he’s now saying that if the recanvass shows no change in vote totals (and a recanvass has never shown a change before) Bevin lost and should go home.

But now the nasty guy is sticking his nose in. And with that prodding, Bevin might charge ahead to contest the results.

Commenters to this post wonder if this is a dry run for the nasty guy to do the same kind of thing a year from now.

No one works for a billion dollars

Jeremiah Red tweeted:

If you worked every single day, making $5000/day, from the time Columbus sailed to America, to the time you are reading this tweet, you would still not be a billionaire, and you would still have less money than Jeff Bezos makes in a week. No one works for a billion dollars.

Corey DenOfHorrors responded:

So I was inspired by this tweet, and I wanted to see exactly how far back in history you would have to go to reach Jeff Bezos' Worth (for this tweet, about $108 billion dollars).

Corey suggested figuring $5000/day from the beginning of human history, or from about 10,000 BC.

So, extending this to the beginning of mankind. $5000 a day, every day, for 12019 years. If you do that, you reach $21 BILLION DOLLARS. About ONE FIFTH of Jeff Bezos' worth.

Alas, Corey’s analysis gets swamped by a quibble over when human history started.

So I took another route through the numbers. Let’s round Bezos’ net worth to $100 billion. Since the time of Jesus, 2000 years ago, one would have to earn $137,000 a day to match his wealth.

I checked that Amazon has been in business 25 years. So that means in that time Bezos has earned $11 million a day or $76 million a week. Bezos probably didn’t earn that much at the beginning, so I consulted Google. It quotes Business Insider to say Bezos makes more that $1.5 billion a week. Let’s look at what one could do with $1.5 billion a week. From my computations:

I don’t know the size of the Amazon workforce. I’ve heard that at Walmart the number of workers is 1 million. So I’ll use that. Bezos could give all million workers a raise of $1500 a week or $75,000 a year.

Bezos could buy modest homes ($200K) for 7,500 homeless families each week, or for 375,000 families a year, essentially ending homelessness.

I’ve heard health insurance for a family can run $25,000 a year. So Bezos could buy health insurance for 60,000 people each week or 3 million people a year.

He could make substantial contributions to addiction programs, or conversions to wind or solar energy (such as cover the roof of each warehouse with solar panels), or to universal pre-kindergarten, or a host of other social justice issues.

I could quibble with details in the tweets I quoted above. Someone could do the same with the numbers I laid out. Even if the details are off this shows the magnitude of the difference Bezos could make in peoples lives. And isn’t.

The top quote makes an important point: No one works for a billion dollars. To get that rich one needs workers to exploit.



Philip Cohen is a sociologist who studies inequality. He created a chart based on census data showing inequality in America since 1947. Within those 70 years inequality is currently at its highest level.



David Leonhardt wrote an opinion column for the New York Times to discuss the taxes the rich are paying – or rather, not paying.

A decade ago Warren Buffet said that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. At the time fact-checkers said that wasn’t the norm.

It is now.

The top 400 families (somewhere around the top 0.0001%) paid overall 23% of their income in taxes. That is lower than any other income group.

Leonhardt discusses the forthcoming book The Triumph of Injustice by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. First, Leonhardt discusses the taxation in the American colonies. The North enacted a wealth tax. The South was hostile to taxation, worried that it “could undermine slavery by eroding the wealth of shareholders.” That inability to raise taxes contributed to their defeat in the Civil war.

Taxes on the rich prevailed in the first half of the 20th century. But since then all sorts of taxes on the wealthy have been repeatedly cut. The justification was the economy would benefit. As many studies have shown over the years, “The wealthy, and only the wealthy, have done fantastically well over the last several decades.”

The American economy just doesn’t function very well when tax rates on the rich are low and inequality is sky high. It was true in the lead-up to the Great Depression, and it’s been true recently. Which means that raising high-end taxes isn’t about punishing the rich (who, by the way, will still be rich). It’s about creating an economy that works better for the vast majority of Americans.

Ah, that reinforces my understanding that a big part of what the rich are doing is keeping money out of the hands of the poor. The rich don’t want an economy that works better for the vast majority of Americans. It’s a supremacist thing.

Leonhardt concludes:

I already know what some critics will say about these arguments — that the rich will always figure out a way to avoid taxes. That’s simply not the case. True, they will always manage to avoid some taxes. But history shows that serious attempts to collect more taxes usually succeed.

Ask yourself this: If efforts to tax the super-rich were really doomed to fail, why would so many of the super-rich be fighting so hard to defeat those efforts?

Amped by hate

A couple evenings ago the nasty guy held a rally in Orlando, Florida to officially announce he is running for a second term. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says his speech was full on authoritarian. What caught her attention was the crowd. Some waited outside the venue for days to make sure they’d be part of that crowd. And, McEwan wrote, they are rabid. They booed “fake news” more than once. They chanted “Drain the swamp!” and “Lock her up!” and went wild for him. They’ll do anything for him. And it will make no difference to them what he does.

I’m all for building community and there was definitely a community in the stadium. But it was a community glorying in their supremacy. If the nasty guy leaves office for any reason other than a natural death these people will be a problem. They will feel cheated of their leader. They will not disappear quietly.

This is not a reason to avoid impeachment.

McEwan summarized:

Trump has tapped into resentments and anger and hatred and bigotries that the Republican Party has spent *decades* cultivating, nurturing, and stoking. He knows how to inflame it. He knows how to exploit it. And he is eminently willing to do it, no matter the cost to this country or its people who aren't among his cultists.

I am horrified watching his crowds react to him, especially knowing keenly that he can and will provoke them to violence at any moment.

This, too, underlines the urgency of impeaching him.

Because that seething resentment and inflamed bigotry doesn't stay behind in the venue. His followers take it with them, out into the world. They are amped by hate.

And that is tremendously dangerous.

Lupinella12 added a comment. Orlando is where the Pulse Nightclub massacre happened in which 49 LGBT and Latinx people died:

We just had the 3 year anniversary of Pulse.

I have friends who have lived here since infancy who are now in fear of getting deported.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend who is non-binary, they are dating a man who is transgender, we were talking about the rally, & how it turns up our hyper-vigilance from our PTSD. They were talking about avoiding certain corner stores/petrol stations due to who was frequenting them. We had both noticed a recent uptick in MAGA hats, which also adds to the general feeling of no longer being as safe as we had been.

Another friend was talking about the rally making her want to move away from a city to be further from people & to feel less like a target for a mass shooting. As she pointed out, since she is also a bisexual Jewish woman, that brings up a whole other list of fears.

Before the rally the McEwan lamented that she doubts the Democratic candidates are ready for the nasty guy cultists and the political press setting off fireworks for him. McEwan notes the Orlando Sentinel will be an exception:

Donald Trump is in Orlando to announce the kickoff of his re-election campaign. We're here to announce our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we're not endorsing: Donald Trump. Some readers will wonder how we could possibly eliminate a candidate so far before an election, and before knowing the identity of his opponent. Because there's no point pretending we would ever recommend that readers vote for Trump. After 2½ years we've seen enough.