Friday, January 27, 2023
Thursday, January 26, 2023
Americans Want Workplace Discrimination Eliminated
The charts above are from the YouGov Poll -- done between January 13th and 18th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.
Suggestions Of How Texas Should Spend Its Surplus
The Houston Chronicle's editorial board has some better suggestions. Here is part of what they wrote:
Lawmakers could start with increasing the base amount of money that public schools get per student, which has remained stagnant at $6,160 since 2019. State employees haven't received a raise in seven years. Retired teachers could get another one-time check to offset cost-of-living increases, or better yet, an actual cost-of-living raise to their pension checks for the first time in 19 years. The surplus could be used to pay down the state Employees Retirement System's nearly $15 billion in unfunded pension liability. Public university systems are asking for $1 billion to stave off tuition increases. Big-city mayors in Texas, including Houston's Sylvester Turner, are making the case for increased funding for mental health services. While billions in federal fundswill certainly help address our roads and bridges and other infrastructure, the state can supplement that by putting even more money toward speeding up implementation of rural broadband internet access and upgrading aging water pipelines. On the criminal justice side, pay raises for Texas Department of Criminal Justice staff are long overdue, as evidenced by Texas' dangerously understaffed prisons, and the agency has repeatedly requested the Legislature to provide funds to install air-conditioning units in its prisons. The state's broken foster care system is also in dire need of funding, particularly toward boosting rates for care providers in the legacy system.
The Leak Was A Symptom Of A Dysfunctional Court
The following is an article by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner:
A whodunit that gripped Washington and echoed across the nation has officially turned into an unsolved mystery. But while the culprit in this particular malfeasance remains at large, we have more than enough evidence to determine guilt for an even greater outrage — the brazen assault on decency, judicial temperament, and honorable jurisprudence by the current iteration of the United States Supreme Court.
Simply put, the court has become a mess — less a hallowed marble edifice to constitutional probity than a dangerously petty and unrestrained mosh pit of dysfunction. Get your house in order, indeed. The black robes aren’t fooling anybody.
The court’s investigation into the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was a stunning failure of mission. The inquiry’s stated goal was not just to identify seriously lax practices at the court around information and technology (which the report did do). We were supposed to learn the name or names behind one of the gravest breaches of court protocol in history. And there, we got nothing.
When the draft opinion overturning Roe was leaked, it created a firestorm. It was rightly seen by those on the political left as representing a dangerous break in precedent, weak legal reasoning, and, most importantly, an attack on women’s health and basic rights. In response to the leak, there was no shortage of public handwringing on the part of court watchers and many of the justices themselves. Public speculation quickly jumped to who might have been the leaker and what might have been their motives. Perhaps not surprisingly, Republicans blamed Democrats, and Democrats blamed Republicans.
As we now know, the draft document ultimately ended up presaging the final decision. Was the leak a way to lock in wavering votes, as many people speculated, or to undercut the legitimacy of the majority, as others contended?
The leak investigation report only creates more questions and elevates the plausibility of theories that had seemed far-fetched. Could it be that some of the justices didn't want to find out the truth? And might it have been one of those justices (or one of their spouses or assistants) who was responsible for the leak?
What has encouraged this speculation is that the justices were not subjected to the same scrutiny in this investigation as everyone else at the court. If the justices think that’s acceptable because they are above reproach, that is only more evidence of how out of touch they are. The real conclusion is that the leak report is far from thorough.
In the wake of the report’s release, many observers started floating the names of Justices Alito and Thomas (as well as Thomas’s wife, Ginni) as the most likely leakers. In this case, the conjecture is purely circumstantial — the idea being that these anti-abortion hardliners had the most to gain by locking in the draft decision. Although both justices have shown a lack of ethical restraint in other matters.
In an attempt to tamp down this conjecture, the woman overseeing the investigation, United States Supreme Court Marshal Gail A. Curley, issued the following statement:
“During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions. The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits.”
Let us note that one of the court’s own, its “Marshal,” did the investigating. There was no independent investigation. And none of the justices was asked to testify under oath.
Is this, the whole summation, really sufficient? If the justices are upset that many Americans think it isn’t, they have only themselves to blame. We have a court that is losing the trust of a large swath of the American people. It is a court in which the ends increasingly justify the means, settled law counts for next to nothing, societal upheaval is trivialized, and self-described “conservative” objectives that would never pass in national legislation are turned into the law of the land by judicial decree.
We also have a majority of the justices on the court appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote (including three by the twice-impeached former holder of the office). We have had Supreme Court picks blocked (Merrick Garland, chosen by President Obama) and others rushed through (Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by President Trump) based solely on political expediency. As for Ginni Thomas, she is a known supporter of the Big Lie around the 2020 election.
The strange and as yet unsolved case of the Supreme Court leak, plus the inadequate investigation around it, leaves the court with a long, hard road to restoration of its reputation and authority.
And as bad as the leak was, it is a symptom of far more systemic rot. Respect must be earned. And it must be earned again once it has been squandered.
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
The Epidemic Of Gun Violence Won't Be Fixed By Republicans
The United States has more gun murders than any other developed nation.
The United States has more gun suicides than any other developed nation.
The United States has more mass shootings than any other developed nation.
The United States has more mass murders by gun than any other developed nation.
The United States has more injuries from gun violence than any other developed nation.
Those things are not true by a small margin, but by a very large margin. For instance, the United States has about 37 gun murders per 100,000 people, while Italy (which finishes second) has only 0.68 gun murders per 100,000 people.
Republican officials, who refuse to pass stricter gun laws, have offered several excuses. Some say it is because of violent video games. But all of the other developed nations have the same violent video games and it has not caused gun violence to rise in their countries.
Some GOP officials claim it is because religion, especially christianity, is becoming less popular in the country. That doesn't make sense either. The other developed nations are nearly all less christian (and less religious in general) than the United States.
Perhaps the biggest excuse Republicans cling to is to claim the gun violence is due to mental illness. But the percentage of the population with mental illness is not any larger in the United States than in any of the other developed nations.
The excuses simply do not work. We all know why gun violence is so prevalent in the United States, whether Republicans want to admit it or not.
IT IS THE GUNS!!!
The United States has enough guns floating around to arm every single man, woman, and child in the country -- and have a few million guns left over.
And too many states allow anyone to easily get any kind of gun (and as much ammunition) as they want. And many of them allow people to openly carry those guns anywhere they want.
I am not talking about restricting gun ownership by decent and law-abiding citizens (as the Republicans like to claim). We can have sensible gun laws and still protect the right of law-abiding citizens to own a gun.
Plugging the holes in our background check law would not prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing to owning a firearm. But failing to do that just makes it easy for dangerous people (criminals, terrorists, the dangerously mentally ill, domestic abusers) to buy and carry the firearm of their choice.
Banning the sales of assault-style rifles would not prevent law-abiding citizens from owning firearms to protect themselves or engage in hunting. Those weapons are only good for killing large amounts of people in a very short period of time. We do not allow citizens to own other weapons of war (like machine guns, rocket launchers, etc.). We should not allow assault-style rifles either, especially since they have become the weapon of choice in mass shootings.
Republicans are not going to pass any sensible gun laws. They only engage in excuses, thoughts, and prayers -- none of which will save any American lives.
Most Americans say they want some stricter (and constitutional) gun laws. But they must carry that conviction to the ballot box. Re-electing gun-loving Republicans will not get anything done. It will just make sure the epidemic of gun violence continues.
We need two parties willing to debate and compromise to solve the country's problems. Sadly, today's Republican Party is not willing to compromise. Until they are, they must be voted out of power.
The lives of many thousands of innocent Americans depends on it.
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