Unfortunately something we have to accept as part of a free society

I had written that five candidates for the Republican nomination for governor of Michigan had been removed from the ballot because of fraudulent signatures on their candidacy petitions. I learned about another batch of signatures hit by fraud. Again, to look for fraud around voting, look at Republicans. Last year Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a batch of bills promoted by the Republican controlled legislature as election security but were really about voter suppression. After that Republicans launched a campaign to gather signatures to put the provisions before the ballot. They called it Secure MI Vote. That right there is a bit misleading because there is a provision in the Michigan constitution that says if a certain number of signatures are gathered the legislature could act on it before the proposal went on the ballot and in this case the governor could not veto it. The Republican legislature is getting very adept at manipulating that provision. A while back enough signatures were gathered to put a proposal to raise the minimum wage on the ballot. The legislature approved it to keep it off the ballot and shortly after the election gutted it. The deadline for getting this type of petition on the 2022 ballot was last week. And Secure MI Vote didn’t submit its signatures. Igor Derysh of Salon reported the reason was because the campaign found out that 20,000 signatures were fraudulent. They did not disclose whether they had used the same company that submitted fraudulent signatures for the hapless governor candidates. The SMV campaign has a lot more than 20K signatures over the required threshold, but decided to do a more thorough check. One difference from those hapless candidates is the SMV campaign found the fraud, not state officials. They plan to submit in a few weeks to get on the 2024 ballot – but they aren’t doing this to actually get on the ballot. Derysh discussed the situation with Nancy Wang, head of Voters Not Politicians, the group that got the citizens redistricting commission on the ballot in 2018 (the commission, not Republicans, drew new maps last year). VNP is now gathering signatures to put voter protection measures in the state constitution and this sort of petition has a different deadline and can’t be usurped by the legislature. And it would overturn the Secure MI Vote provisions. Wang said the SMV campaign has been plagued by allegations that petition circulators were misleading citizens. Many would say it was to “improve voting” but when pressed for details they had nothing. And when challenged they would whine “You’re messing with my money.” Which means this isn’t an actual citizen initiative. Wang said it shows these are not policies they are proud to discuss. They must mislead to get signatures. Look to Republicans to find election fraud. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos mentioned the eight shootings over the weekend. Though at least twelve victims died it looks like none of the events was classified as a mass shooting. McCarter went on to discuss how several provisions in the current bill before the House might have affected the carnage had they been passed in 1999. This is based on analysis from the New York Times and the Violence Project Mass Shooter Database. Four killers would have been stopped because of age, another four by background checks, twenty would not have purchased large capacity magazines. Adding safer gun storage and they might have changed the course of 35 mass shootings where 446 people were killed and hundreds wounded. It is possible some of the shooters would have gotten guns by other means. As for red flag laws, 46% of the shooters had told someone they intended to cause harm and 36% had expressed suicidal intentions. Meanwhile Republicans are abdicating, saying what’s the point of these laws? People will just break them. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported on a poll by CBS News and YouGov.

One of the questions in the poll asked respondents if they feel that mass shootings are "unfortunately something we have to accept as part of a free society" or "something we can prevent and stop if we really tried." Almost half of all respondents who identified as Republicans, about 44%, said that shootings like the one in Uvalde are "unfortunately something we have to accept as part of a free society." Comparatively, 85% of Democrats and 73% of independents said mass shootings are "something we can prevent and stop if we really tried."

That prompts me to ask: What is your definition of a free society? We would consider most, likely all, of the Western Democracies to be “free” and they have a much lower rate of gun deaths. So does your definition of a “free” society mean being free to enforce your high position in the social hierarchy by using a gun? Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Heather Fletcher is running for the Frederick County Board of Education in Maryland. She came across a Pride Month display at the Brunswick Public Library and checked out 20 LGBTQ themed books. She didn’t do this to become enlightened about the kinds of people that make up our community. She did it so they would be unavailable for other people to check out – another way of pulling books from the shelves. She had appealed to the librarians to pull the books, but when they refused she took matters into her own hands. Fletcher reportedly returned the books, then vowed she would never be a patron of libraries in the county. Bye! Clio2 of the Kos booklovers community wrote about three LGBTQ books that have been banned in lots of places. They are Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson, and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. I’ve read and written about the first one. The other two are on my to buy list. While those books are, on their own, worth a look I have another reason to click on the link. Clio2 ended the post by including the official video of the song Younger Me, sung by TJ Osborne of Brothers Osborne. I rarely listen to popular music and even less to country music, but this is a good one. Back in February TJ came out as gay, becoming the first openly gay country singer. Coming out inspired this song in which TJ talks to his younger self, both about why did he wait so long and that he needed all those trips around the sun to get where he is now. The song is good enough I had to find the lyrics online and listen again. And again. The images on this video are pretty great too.