airmid
airmid's JournalSupreme Court, in Bizarre Unsigned Opinion, Strikes Wisconsin Legislative Maps
In a per curiam (unsigned) opinion on the shadow docket, over the dissent of Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, the Supreme Court has rejected a redistricting plan that a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court had adopted for drawing state assembly and senate districts. I am on my way to teach and so I have time for just a brief analysis here, but the way this case was handled is quite bizarre and is another signal of a conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court showing increasing hostility to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The majority decision essentially says this: there was an impasse between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislature over drawing district lines. So the court had to draw lines in the first instance. It set forth criteria which essentially said that parties should propose maps that make the least change from the maps of the last decade. The court adopted the Governor’s maps, and those maps added another majority-minority district around Milwaukee. The governor added this district saying it was required by the Voting Rights Act because the failure to draw the district would violate Section 2 of the VRA. When the state supreme court adopted the Governor’s maps, it left open the possibility that they could be challenged later as violating the VRA or as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander (a Shaw claim), violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause. There was no full airing of either issue in this fast-track litigation to draw the district lines.
[link:https://electionlawblog.org/?p=128343|
Anyone watching Morning Joe? Did you see it?
I just saw the commercial hyping how terrified we should all be at the thought of Medicare For All. Loads of bullshit. I guess every other first-world nation can manage to take care of their people in a reasonable manner but the good ole USA just isn't bright enough. Because it appears the rubes in this country prefer their bullshit spoonfed.
Of course, being the curious sort, I decided to see who was running this pantload of a commercial. One Nation America. Sounds nice, they have a flashy site with a lot of reasonable sounding moderate bullshit, invoking the founding fathers' ideals. Let's start with their "Leadership Team"...
Bobby Burchfield
Chairman
Bobby R. Burchfield is a partner at King & Spalding’s Washington, D.C., office. There is a lot of stuff here about how he's never lost a case and worked for HW Bush and what a wonderfully accomplished person he is. Knowing human nature and Republicans in general, I know this is a complete whitewashing so off to searching I go. ....I find out Bobby R. Burchfield, who was retained in January 2017 as an ethics advisory for the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Trump and ethics together is a fucking joke for starters. In March of this year, he filed an amicus brief on behalf of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit against CREW. He is also the douche who said: “The renting of a hotel room from one of the Trump businesses is not correlated to President Trump’s performance of the duties of the Office of President.” This is also the same guy whose wife got caught banging an inmate in a car in the parking lot of the prison.
Sally Vastola
Secretary, Board Member
Sally Vastola is a member of Holland & Knight’s Government Relations & Public Policy Practice. She served as executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee and a longtime aide to New York Republican Representative Thomas Reynolds. She also served as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the National Republican Congressional Committee managing the organization’s strategy, budget and daily operations. That alone is damning in my book considering the GOP has done everything it can to keep health care out of reach for millions of Americans.
Law served as chief legal officer and general counsel of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In that role, Law ensured legal compliance for the Chamber’s multimillion-dollar political program, and personally created and directed the Chamber’s successful grassroots advocacy campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.
Prior to his stint at the U.S. Chamber, Law was deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor under President George W. Bush.
On Capitol Hill, Law served as executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for both the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. Law was the manager of Senator Mitch McConnell’s first reelection campaign in 1990, and served as McConnell’s chief of staff from 1991 to 1997.
Another Republican douche.
Steven Duffield
Vice President for Policy
Served on Capitol Hill includes service to Sen. Jon Kyl in the Senate Republican Policy Committee and the Senate Republican Conference, where he was policy director and chief counsel. Steven managed those leadership offices’ policy functions and advised on legislative strategy, coalition building, and message development.
After his service in the Senate, Steven served as executive director of the Republican Platform Committee where he managed the drafting and adoption of the national party’s official policy platform in 2008.
And another Republican douche.
Republicans have been working to destroy our right to use our taxes for the benefit of all in favor of the rich and powerful. The thumb that punches us down has become the weight of a whole Party as they seek to destroy the last protections for the planet, ourselves, our children, and every other policy that actually benefits all of us in favor of policy that favors the few.
In this election season please do your homework. Think about what you are seeing, reading, and hearing. Realize that emotional response was triggered for a reason that may be hidden from full view. FOLLOW THE MONEY.
Here's the ad. Just scroll down a bit...
[link:https://www.onenationamerica.org/one-nation-launches-new-ad-to-stop-medicare-for-none/|
Good Gods it's starting again...the fake Clinton bs stories are making the
Rounds again from such sources as neonnettle and yournewswire. It's infuriating and correcting this crap is time consuming. Anyone else seeing this?
This broke me....I have been trying very hard to keep it together. I have my own
personal reasons for hating gun violence. But this did me in...
Earlier I shared a post from my friend, Mr. B.
Well now I have my own.
In 7th period, out of nowhere today, the fire alarms at my school went off. My students stood up as they always do when the alarm goes off for drills.
My brain immediately went into robot mode. I recalled the incident from yesterday like a mathematician calculating a problem on a whiteboard. Zero emotions. Zero fear.
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand. The kids froze. “Let’s sit for now,” I said calmly. They sat, looking at me in terror.
“What if it’s like—!!!” One child cried out, but I turned, shook my head, and kept my hand held out.
“It’s not. Probably someone pulled the alarm. It’s okay. Let’s just wait.”
We waited. I kept eye contact with the teacher in the classroom across the hall from me. We both shook our heads.
Then I waited to hear gunshots.
Do you hear me?
I stood in front of your children and I waited to hear gunshots.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT????
I didn’t want to put them in lockdown just yet. Calmness and control is the only defense I have against a room of panicked teenagers. I turned and I looked every single one of them in the eyes and I nodded my head reassuringly. You are my babies. I have you. I have you.
I kept glancing across at the teacher across from me. He shook his head. We stayed still.
Suddenly, I saw our guidance counselor in the hallway. She beckoned for us to come out. I stuck my head out and said “it’s safe?” She said “Yes, let’s go out.”
“Come on, guys,” I said. “It’s all right. We can go outside.”
They behaved wonderfully. They followed me out calmly, we evacuated, and then we stood outside for 30 minutes while fire trucks and police cars checked out our building. It was a faulty alarm. Everyone was safe.
I took my children back inside. We had a successful drill. Everyone was safe. I even made a point to update parents and community that we were all safe.
School dismissed.
The kids left, chatting excitedly how they missed half a class period.
I sat at my desk.
My little sister came in to say goodbye for the day and I lost it. Sobbing, snot coming out, face burning, nauseated.
I was waiting to hear gunshots. I was waiting to hide my kids. I was waiting for the shots.
Keep your opinions off my post. I’m home and I’m angry.
I stood in front of your kids and waited to die for them.
I STOOD IN FRONT OF YOUR KIDS AND WAITED TO DIE FOR THEM!
Why Were Underestimating American Collapse
Why We’re Underestimating American Collapse
The Strange New Pathologies of the World’s First Rich Failed State
[link:https://eand.co/why-were-underestimating-american-collapse-be04d9e55235|
You might say, having read some of my recent essays, “Umair! Don’t worry! Everything will be fine! It’s not that bad!” I would look at you politely, and then say gently, “To tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re taking collapse nearly seriously enough.”
Why? When we take a hard look at US collapse, we see a number of social pathologies on the rise. Not just any kind. Not even troubling, worrying, and dangerous ones. But strange and bizarre ones. Unique ones. Singular and gruesomely weird ones I’ve never really seen before, and outside of a dystopia written by Dickens and Orwell, nor have you, and neither has history. They suggest that whatever “numbers” we use to represent decline — shrinking real incomes, inequality, and so on —we are in fact grossly underestimating what pundits call the “human toll”, but which sensible human beings like you and I should simply think of as the overwhelming despair, rage, and anxiety of living in a collapsing society.
Let me give you just five examples of what I’ll call the social pathologies of collapse — strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don’t usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.
America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days. That’s one every other day, more or less. That statistic is alarming enough — but it is just a number. Perspective asks us for comparison. So let me put that another way. America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, the phenomenon of regular school shootings appears to be a unique feature of American collapse — it just doesn’t happen in any other country — and that is what I mean by “social pathologies of collapse”: a new, bizarre, terrible disease striking society.
more at link
And then there is this...re:Franken
Sen. Franken's escort disputes what happened.
[link:https://twitter.com/BanditRandom/status/931418233906675712|
Kingston coal ash spill workers treated as 'expendables
It was the nation’s largest coal ash spill, and it would bring a stampede of government supervisors, environmental advocates, lawyers, journalists, politicians and contractors to Kingston, Tenn.
But not one of them asked why the hundreds of blue-collar laborers cleaning up the mess weren’t wearing even basic dust masks.
Or why their safety gear consisted of nothing more than short-sleeved T-shirts, jeans, work boots and vinyl reflective vests.
Now, nearly a decade later, at least 17 of those workers are dead, dozens more are dying, and the conditions under which they worked are being blamed.
“I call them ‘the expendables,’” said Janie Clark, wife of a worker in failing health. “These men were treated like collateral damage, and they fell between the cracks in this toxic place.”
[link:http://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2017/07/21/kingston-coal-ash-spill-workers-treated-expendables-lawsuit-sick-and-dying-contends/451537001/|
Does anyone with legal experience know if a state's SOS turns over our
Voting history, Social Security numbers, etc., can we sue? This is the most troubling thing I have heard of late.
A week ago a Congressman was shot along with several others. At that time
there were a lot of call for a kinder approach with less hateful rhetoric. And yet, today, we are watching as a small group of men are in a back room determining how best to screw us while engineering another large transfer of wealth to their and their Sugar Daddies pockets. And they want a less polarized approach. They are going to literally kill people. And do it gleefully, glibly, smiling and laughing at the pain and despair they will visit on the most vulnerable in society. Do they really think anyone is going to be kind when Grandma is thrown onto the street, or someone must stop their child's cancer treatments, or a vet needing counseling is left wanting? I am astounded at their hubris and what appears to be their clear lack of concern about how the populace will react. Personally, almost all my family will be effected. For some, it will be terminal. So screw their kinder approach. I will not to quietly.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Ohio
Current location: Ohio
Member since: Thu Apr 20, 2017, 04:50 AM
Number of posts: 500
