Winning local elections is worth a half million

My posting over the next couple of weeks may slow a bit. The Winter Olympics are on. I watched the opening ceremonies and will watch the closing and as much of the figure skating events as I can. I think I got hooked into watching figure skating way back when Scott Hamilton was competing. Then several years in the 1990s many Olympic skaters would do a traveling show after the Olympic or World games and I would see it when it came through Detroit. I was surprised that when I logged into my internet provider’s streaming service the first option to view the opening ceremonies wasn’t NBC but CBC of Canada. I think there were fewer commercial interruptions, though there were a couple times the screen was split and a commercial was shown in one side. I enjoy watching the opening ceremonies. It is a place where the nations of the world come together, a bit of community. Some of the things I noticed: The flag of China was brought in, then passed through representatives of the country’s minorities, each in their native dress. A nice gesture, and yes the commentators talked about the oppression of the Uighurs. Again, the flag bearers of each country were, when possible, two people, a man and a woman. The order the countries entered wasn’t alphabetical. It was in order of the Chinese characters that represent the country’s name. And that order depends on the number of strokes that make up the first character. Which put Australia last. As groups entered the music played was dramatic music from Western operas. I listed the countries as they entered. I counted 91. This is Saudi Arabia’s first participation in the winter games. They had 1 athlete. It was also the first appearance of Haiti. The single athlete from American Samoa wasn’t able to participate in the opening ceremony (likely due to early contest), so a local volunteer carried their flag. I counted only four countries from Africa. The athletes didn’t gather in the stadium floor. They walked through, then out again to an assigned place in the stadium seating. Yeah, the ceremony was a lot of propaganda. Such as passing the flag through the minorities and using Lennon’s Imagine as a theme song of the games, and the slogan “Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together.” One hates to ask what China, or any authoritarian state, means by “together.” Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday, shows another big drop in the new cases per day. The weekly peaks since the start of January are now 27,555, 24,790, 19,891, 12,457, and 8,884. This last number is is below the December peaks of 9,240 late in the month (two weeks before the big peak) and 9,320 early in the month. The deaths per day in the last two weeks of January were in the 55-99 range. Some COVID tracking websites say we’ve passed 900,000 COVID deaths in America. The CDC Data Tracker is almost there at 898K deaths. We’re getting close to a million – and a half million have died since just before Biden’s inauguration when he marked the passing of 400K. That’s a half million dead since the vaccine has been available. The CDC reports 76 million cases, which is a bit under a quarter of the nation’s population. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed various news stories that show the death toll in America due to the omicron variant is so much higher than everywhere else. These stories say little or nothing about why the American death toll is so high. Shouldn’t good journalism discuss the five Ws – who, what, where, when, and why? Too frequently why is missing. Sumner listed five things that would fill in that why. Here’s one of them with Sumner’s conclusion.

In multiple states, Republican governors have issued executive orders—or Republican legislatures have passed bills—designed to undercut medical authorities, limit the ability of local governments to promote safe practices, and direct anger over the pandemic toward those who are working hardest to end it. Without that information, the idea that deaths in the U.S. are higher than they should be is a tragedy. With that information, it’s a crime.

Leonard Moty, a Republican on the Board of Supervisors of Shasta County, California was subject of a recall election this past week, according to Rebekah Sager of Kos in an article posted Thursday. I haven’t seen an update, so don’t know if Moty kept his seat. His potential replacement would give the five member board a majority aligned with the militia movement. Residents are deeply divided over measures to lessen the spread of COVID. Moty had told the Los Angeles Times about these militia members, “Their agenda is, ‘If you don’t agree with us then we have to get rid of you.’” This is one example of many of a takeover of local politics. If storming of the national Capitol doesn’t work, start the takeover from the bottom. A takeover by a militia means, of course, intimidation and threats. Another example of this was reported by Christopher Reeves of Kos way back at the end of October (yeah, it got lost in my browser tabs). The 1776 PAC has raised a half million dollars to get far right extremists onto local school boards. A lot of people say local elections don’t matter, so why vote in them? Here’s a group saying winning local elections is worth a half million. That win sometimes comes with the ability to control who is allowed to vote – and they definitely mean white people. A couple months ago my city had elections for mayor and city council. This time was the first I had seen financial reports of individual campaigns. All of them had about $3000 or less and their greatest expense was flyers (rather bland) sent to every residential address. I doubt the expenses of a local school board campaign would be much different. With a half million one could be a major player in perhaps 250 local elections. The Republicans in Iowa are pushing a bill to put a camera in every classroom to allow parents to livestream what their darling’s teacher is doing. Perhaps they could even review key moments later. Hefty fines would be laid on teachers who cover the lens and don’t have a proper reason. Democrats object because of: Cybersecurity nightmare. Lack of faith in the school’s IT department. Invasion of personal privacy. Government overreach. Teachers left open to being accused of a thought crime. Leaving teachers open to the craziest parents. It’s a very communist mentality. It devalues teachers (already an old complaint). It will drive teachers away at a time when there already not enough. The Republican response to all that is the same one they pull out whenever surveillance cameras go up: If you’re doing nothing wrong what’s the problem? Class, your assignment for tomorrow is to explain the various ways that statement is wrong. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Clare Malone of the New Yorker. She discussed the decline of local newspapers – two thirds of American counties no longer have a daily paper. Wrote Malone:

That decline has been linked to reduced civic engagement and political competition, and increased government corruption. In a 2018 article in the Journal of Communication, a group of researchers argued that the loss of local news also contributed to more polarized voting. In a piece explaining the work, one of the paper’s authors, Joshua Darr, cited the political scientist Lilliana Mason’s concept of “cross-cutting identity.” Local news, Darr noted, offers Americans a connection beyond party-line issues. “When people read news about their neighborhoods, schools and municipal services, they think like locals,” he wrote. “When they read about national political conflict, they think like partisans.” Local coverage allows readers to fight over the best deer-population-control methods or property taxes in their town rather than the latest Supreme Court nomination battle.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Republicans are taking part in negotiations on properly funding the federal government. But the offer appears to be another delay tactic. The current continuing resolution expires in about two weeks. Which means a third of this fiscal year is already past and those resolutions mean the government is limited to spending according to the trimmed down budget of the nasty guy. As long those continuing resolutions continue Biden can’t restore many federal agencies to full strength. Which is precisely why Republicans are continuing to delay. McCarter explains more here. Sumner reported the Republican National Committee censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republicans on the January 6th Committee investigating the Capitol attack. There are a couple things about the resolution that are important.

Representatives Cheney are Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both using their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power ...

No the attack was not “legitimate political discourse.” It was a violent attack and Republicans are trying to erase that. And now they are saying a minimal requirement for being a Republican is to fully believe the attack was legitimate and the nasty guy was right to call it because of his false claim the election was stolen from him. The part of the resolution that says:

a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol

was changed by Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, after the resolution was voted on. Yep, they’re blaming Democrats. Sumner wrote:

Republicans are now officially, objectively the pro-insurrection, pro-violence, pro-sedition party. After all, those claims about “ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse” must surely include the members of the Oath Keepers who have been charged with seditious conspiracy, and whose plans for Jan. 6 included stationing massive caches of weapons and explosives just outside D.C.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Cheney responded with a tweet that included a video of some of the riorters attacking police. “This is not ‘legitimate political discourse.’” Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that the Arizona Senate passed a bill to keep trans girls out of girl’s sports. Higgins pointed out the various transphobic parts of the bill, then got into the strange part.

For example, the bill sums up the “biological differences” between genders as determined “genetically during embryonic development.” It goes on to say that [cisgender] men have “higher natural levels of testosterone” which results in “men being able to generate higher speed and power” during activities. The measure also says the “sports performance gap” between men and women is “insurmountable.” This bill, unlike some other attempts to keep trans youth out of sports, does permit people assigned female at birth to participate on men’s sports teams, meaning that non-binary students and trans boys would be allowed to play boys’ sports. This doesn’t mean the legislation isn’t inherently transphobic, but that the people behind it are so stuck in their outdated perspectives, they think someone assigned female at birth can’t possibly take a cisgender boys’ spot or beat one in a competition.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

After losing the election in 2020, former President Trump reportedly asked if Homeland Security could seize voting machines in swing states. And if you're wondering whether or not that's evil, let me point you to the word seize. It's always evil when seize is involved. For example, you'll hear a villain say, “Seize them, you fools!” But you'll never hear anyone say, “Hey, good news, the mayor has seized more funding for the arts.” —Seth Meyers

Scott Simon and Matthew Schwartz of NPR reported that Dillon Helbig of Boise, Idaho is a talented and sneaky eight year old. Over Christmas break he wrote and illustrated an 81 page book about a fantastical adventure. He then snuck it into the library and slipped it onto one of the shelves. The library staff, prompted by mom, found it and decided it fit their criteria for being included in their collection. There are now 125 names on the waiting list to check it out. He has an idea for a next book, a story about closets that eat jackets. I heard of an interesting drag queen. She is Pattie Gonia and a big part of what she does is advocate for the climate. This link is to her Instagram account. Since I don’t do Instagram I’ll let you explore further.