A petition re HR 9495

We all, I expect, get emails urging us to sign petitions that too often turn out to be simply fund appeals in disguise. Even so, it can be an easy and quick way to register an opinion, so I admit to responding to a good number of them.

I recently got one from the American Friends Service Committee regarding HR 9495, the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.” It’s a dangerous bill in that it, as the petition says, empowers the Treasury Secretary to strip non-profit status from any group they label as “terrorist supporting.” On November 12 the GOPpers tried to suspend House rules to pass it, but the move, which required a 2/3 vote, failed - despite getting the votes of 52, count ‘em, 52, Democrats. So they have the lather-rise-repeat route, re-writing the bill a bit so it can be brought up again under regular order. That vote is expected soon.

So I signed the petition, fully expecting it will do no good as my House rep is a long-term (like 40+ years in the House long) right-winger who would be delighted to see his opponents who oppose Israel government policy crushed to financial dust (and who voted to fast track this bill). But better to say “no” and lose than to say nothing.

However, I make a point of taking advantage of the option, when it is there, of re-writing these sorts of petitions to say it in a way I would prefer. So just for the record, this is my version, is what I said:

I urge you to vote NO on H.R. 9495, “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

It's enough well-known that is should be unnecessary to say, but loss of tax-exempt status could be financially-crippling for many affected organizations. Which is why provisions of this bill are so dangerous, as they would give the executive branch the power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization based on a unilateral accusation of support of terrorism with no requirement for proof.

Such power could easily be abused to quash free speech and punish any organizations that oppose the views of any administration - as indeed such laws have been used in other countries, including ones which I expect we would agree the US should not emulate.

The options for appeal could best be described as symbolic, consisting of little more than appealing to the same agency that made the charge while essentially requiring the accused to prove a negative. That is, it offers no practical protection against an executive branch that wants to exploit this authority to effectively close almost any organization in the political or social opposition.

What’s more, existing laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from taking part in the sort of illegal activities that this bill purports to address. Which reveals the point of this bill: Those sorts of charges would have to proved in court, not simply asserted.

I urge you: Do not cooperate with this un-American attack on dissent. Vote NO on H.R. 9495.

One final note: The bill also contains provisions helping overseas hostages avoid IRS penalties, which has already passed the Senate unanimously. By all means, pass them - as separate legislation.

It appears that in the end this bill will pass; the GOPers seem determined to give Tweetie-pie the power to financially damage if not cripple opposition which he can't crush legally. If they fail this time, they will simply re-introduce it in the new session of Congress with their majority in both houses - and will do it with a bunch of dunce cap Democrats trailing behind.

So why sign it? Because that's what we have to do now: raise every "no" we can because, again, it's better for the present and the future to say "no" and lose than to say nothing.Yes, it's a small thing, every a very small one - but it's a thing.

Consider it just a question

Consider this to be just a question, one directed toward every red-cap-wearing MAGA muppet out there. No, seriously.

In the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Republicans and right-wingers of various sorts immediately blamed the shooting on Joe Biden, Democrats in general, DEI programs, and - of course - the "liberal" media.

Oh, and they're immediately starting to fundraise off it.

So here's the question:

What the hell happened to "not politicizing a tragedy?"

What happened to "thoughts and prayers" for the family of Corey Compreatore or the others still in the hospital? What happened to the "lone wacko" talk or any of the rest of the vapid homilies you always spew to evade your own moral responsibility for a climate of threat and violence?

You generation of vipers! You liars! You hypocrites! You are like whited sepulchers, prettified outwardly but inside you are corruption and death.

And no, I will not moderate my tone in pursuit of "unity." Paraphrasing William Lloyd Garrison, I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this topic, the topic of your denial of democracy, your rejection of reason, your jettisoning of justice, your dismissal of decency and all in service of protecting your power by projecting your packaged paranoia - on this topic I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation, nor will I.

One truth I will speak now is that I confess that I'm not sure that in the short run we can stop you. But ultimately we will and at some point your descendants will be ashamed to admit to being related to someone who thought as you do. We will because, one last paraphrased quote, the arc of the moral universe is long and my eye reaches only a little ways. But I do know that moral arc bends towards justice - and so away from you.

Remember this - always!

I wrote about this more than a year ago. In fact, I first wrote about it more than 29 years ago. But events of late have pushed this back to the forefront of my political thoughts, pushing hard enough to get through a wall of struggles with burnout and depression to get me to write this, even if it's the only thing I manage to get out this summer.

Because I want the following quote burned into the consciousness of every single leftist, every single progressive, every single liberal, every single person on the entire left half of the American political spectrum and even those to the right of that line who are not yet beyond the reach of reality. And it is this: and yes it is deliberately in a great big bold font to emphasize its importance:

“‘Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservatives’ goal."
- George Will, syndicated column, January 2, 1995

Yes. That's what he wrote. "Back to 1900." And every single thing conservatives say and do, every single thing they promote, every single proposal they make, every single emotional button they go to push, should be seen through that lens. They want to reproduce the social and economic relations that existed 125 years ago. They want to, in their own words, go "Back to 1900." And that is exactly what they have been trying, are trying, and will continue to try to do. Go back.

Back, that is, to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of widespread child labor and twelve- or fifteen-hour work days and six- or even seven-day work weeks. Before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death.

Back to a time before environmental protection laws or consumer protection laws, a time when patent "medicines" were common and government "regulation" was more about promoting corporate interests than regulating them because caveat emptor was the rule of the day.

Back to before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance, before any kid of public insurance, including for health, was even under discussion and decades before it was taken seriously..

“Back to 1900.” Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition and the way to deal with poverty was to shove it out of sight.

Back to a time when education was largely a perk of privilege, only half of children went to school, only 6.4 percent graduated high school, and the majority of adults had no more than eight years of schooling.

Back before civil or voting rights laws, back when women couldn’t vote, wives were chattel, blacks were either “good n*****s” who got called “boy” or “uppity n*****s” who got lynched, racism (against Irish, Italians, Chinese, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians were sick or perverted while as far as “polite society” was concerned, bi, trans, or other flavors of the queer community simply didn’t exist.

Back to a time when valuing Protestant Christians over other religions and other people's rights was unremarkably ordinary and some, including atheists, were subject not only to social discrimination but also legal barriers to participation in society.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite and powerful were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss.

“Back to 1900” is indeed “a serviceable summation” of the right wing’s goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to benefit their selfish, warped, morally warped lives.

Maya Angelou wisely said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

We should have been paying attention when the fanatics were openly declaring what they wanted, who they were and are, and we either ignored it or dismissed it as hyperbole.

We shouldn’t have. Because they showed us, they told us directly - and we didn’t listen.

We can at least listen now. And then do more.

And we, each of us, can start by burning that quote into our minds.

Footnotes: For those who may not know, George Will is what passes for an intellectual among the right. And if anyone doubts the quote, I still have the column that I clipped out of my local paper. And it is a quote, not a paraphrase.
 

The Rules

Recently, I saw a video about the "Reverse Gish Gallop." The Gish Gallop is a verbal tactic based on the premise that it almost always takes longer to rebut a claim than it does to make it, and, as you likely know, consists of firing out so many claims and charges so fast that there is no way the target can adequately refute of even contest all of them.

People came to expect this so tried to prepare rapid-fire responses to expected claims. The "Reverse Gish Gallop" consists of picking out something you said, some error no how minor, and attack that as if it discredited every other rebuttal you made or at least distracting attention from the fact you had presented them.

That reminded me of some things in what I call my "Rules for Right-wingers," which I post from time to time as reminders. Since the last time was about four years ago, I figured this presented an opportunity to do it again.

The fact is, flakes, nutcases, paranoids, and other assorted bozos are almost the totality of the present right-wing and almost the totality of the national Republican party apart from the bigots and bosses whose only interests are of the self kind. For some time I had observed with varying degrees of annoyance and bemusement the predictable tactics of the wingers in debates - or rather, their tactics in avoiding actual debates. But I finally came to a point where I had had it with the evasions, the dodges, the schemes and slime that make up winger discussions and began assembling a list of those tactics.

So here it is, the latest always-subject-to-expansion-or-refinement list of wingnut arguing tactics and operating procedures. They are listed simply in the order in which they got added. Thoughts (and suggestions for new rules) are welcome.

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Rule #1: Attack, attack, attack!
In fact, try to level so many attacks so fast that your opponent never gets to make a criticism of their own because they are so busy trying to catch up to your attacks. However, don't forget to be deeply shocked and offended if anyone on the left responds in kind.

Rule #2: Deny, deny, deny!
Doesn't matter if it's something undeniable, deny it anyway.

Rule #3: When facts are beyond even your ability to deny, change the subject.
This can be done in various ways, for example:
- Introduce irrelevant details on a tangential point.
- Pluck out from what your opponent said an individual phrase you think you can attack, even if it's one that was just tossed out offhandedly, and treat that as if it's the focus of the entire discussion.
- Tie up the discussion in piles of minutia to the point where everyone, including your opponent, loses track of the actual issue.

Rule #4: Issue a lengthy, ranting denunciation of "the left."
This often can be initiated with "whataboutism," responding to criticisms by ignoring them and going "Yeah? Well what about" whatever seems most useful at the moment. Try to include the words "hypocrites" and/or "hypocrisy," arguing that the left can't legitimately criticize the right (because any such criticism is by your definition hypocritical) while insisting that the right can continue to criticize the left. (Note: Where possible, include the phrase "you liberals" or better yet, "you libtards.")

Rule #5: Make the particular stand for the whole.
Find something offensive or silly some liberal or leftist, somewhere, sometime, said or did and label it as identifying the entire left half of the American political spectrum. Demand that your opponent spend their time denouncing that example rather than discussing the original topic.

Rule #6: Never answer a question.
When faced with one, ignore it and respond with a question, preferably on a different point. If possible, the question should be accusatory. If you do not get an answer, repeat the question and loudly demand it be answered while continuing to ignore the original question you were asked. If you do get an answer, ignore it. If necessary, drop the matter without acknowledging having gotten a reply; if possible, repeat the question, insisting it has not been answered, even if it has.

Rule #7: No amount of proof is enough.
Demand every remotely questionable assertion by your opponent be proved in every conceivable detail, right down to dates, times, and places, complete with signed affidavits. Refer to all factual assertions by your opponents as "just your opinion" even if the level of proof you demanded is supplied.

Rule #8: Assert unsourced statistics and facts with great assurance.
Or, more appropriately these days, assert "alternative facts." Reply to requests for proof by saying some version of "You can look it up." You thereby demand that your opponents do the work of trying to prove your argument for you.

Rule #9: Frame the debate in false choices.
For example, "Do you support socialism or freedom?"

Rule #10: Accuse the accuser.
You could call this "I'm rubber and you're glue" method: Insist, even in the absence of any foundation, that any criticism of you actually applies to your opponent. For example, if someone notes you're avoiding a debate, insist "You're the one who won't debate!" Faced with examples of right-wingers lying, reply "That fits you lefties to a T!" If something you said is challenged as bigoted, say "You're being intolerant!" or better yet, "You're the real racist!"

Rule #11: When a claim has been debunked, continue to use it nonetheless.
When it has been debunked so thoroughly and completely that continuing to use it is counterproductive, stop claiming it for a time, after which assert it again as if the debunking had never happened. For numerous examples where this can be found, see climate change denialists.

Rule #12: Never accept responsibility.
Never, never, never admit any responsibility for the meaning or impact of your own words. If you want guidance, see almost any GOPper statement on January 6.

Rule #13: When all else has failed - and even when it hasn't - lie.
Just make crap up. Important: Keep repeating it. See Rule #11.

Rule #14: When you fear a contrary point may be raised, shout.
If that contrary point is a good one, shout very loudly. Your point may not get heard, but neither will your opponent's. (This is primarily for use on television.)

Rule #15: Seize control of the Clock of History.
Choose the period of time most advantageous to your argument and insist that any event outside that time frame, either before it or after it, is irrelevant and must not be considered.

Rule #16: "Both Sides Now."
If the behavior of some rught-wingers is so undeniably bad that it can't be explained away, airily dismiss it with "Both sides do it." Freely employ false equivalencies.

Rule #17: All debate stops when you win - and only when you win.
Remember that there are only two responses to anything in contention: It's "up for debate" and "We won, the debate is over, shut up." Gun control provides a good example: In the 2008, the Supreme Court, for the first time, held that owning a gun is an individual right. Even since then, the pro-gun claim has been "The Supreme Court has ruled. The debate is over." But for the 69 years preceding that, the controlling precedent was that the 2nd Amendment was about a collective right of collective self-defense, not an individual one. In all those years, no one on the right ever said "The Supreme Court has ruled. The debate is over. We lost."

Rule #18: If you can't win by the rules, change them.
A great example of this is the recent attempt by the GOPper-controlled Ohio legislature to toughen the requirements for an amendment to the state constitution in an attempt to head of protection of reproductive rights.

Rule #19: Intellectual consistency and honesty are for wusses and losers.
Should need no example, as there are new ones every day, but I happen to favor this classic: Late in evening of election day, 2012, it looked for a time that Obama might lose the popular vote to Mitt Romney despite having won the electoral vote handily. Tweetie-pie tweeted that such a result would be "a total sham and a travesty" and the electoral college is "a disaster for a democracy."

Rule #20: Sitzfleisch.
It's German for "sitting flesh" and it goes back to the days before chess clocks put time constraints on games and players would sometimes win by simply taking so long to move that their opponent would either give up or become so tired from the wait that they would make foolish moves and lose. More generally it now means winning by virtue of sheer, unmitigated, stubbornness. Right-wingers are past masters at that.

Rule #21: Play the victim.
Whatever it is, the right-wing claims they are the real victims. They are the ones facing discrimination, being oppressed, whose free speech is imperiled, who are being called names, the ones who can't get a decent break.

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Okay, that's all the rules I have now, ones which collectively show up right-wingers for what they are: a bunch of selfish, whining, crybabies only interested in their own power and privilege. Which is why playing the victim comes so easily to them.

I'll wrap this up with an observation, one I've made before in discussing this: I frankly expect many of us have at some time or another been guilty of one or more of these sins in the course of a debate, especially if it got heated. But occasional sins in the heat of the moment is not what this is about. This is about a consistent pattern by the right of evasion and deceit. It is being an intellectual coward. It is about being a bully. It is about being a liar.

It is about being a right-winger.

Watch this!

 Trust me. I mean it. Watch this.

It will be worth the 26 minutes of your life.

Welcome to Fish-Wrapping 101

Or maybe 404.

I have written a number of times in the past about how we are uninformed, malinformed, and misinformed by our mainstream news media and on the impacts on our political discourse that result (some examples here).

Our latest example comes to us from Newsweek. It’s not as egregious as some, where the bias lies in shading and emphasis, but it is so ridiculous that it deserves mention.

One of the things that media outlets, particularly print outlets, know full well is that a good many people never get past the first graph of a news article. That’s why the standard of “the 5 Ws” (who, what, when, where, why) exists; the idea is to get as many of the basic facts as high in the article as possible, if possible in the first graph, to ensure that the greatest number of readers will have them - because that’s often all many readers see and so form the impression they take away from it.

It’s also why the headline is important, as it should (and in practice does) frame the substance of the issue in a single line or two. One thing as readers we should be wary of is that the headline we see on an article from an outside source, for example on a news aggregator or a reprint of a wire service report, may not be the one the original source put on it and so may have a different slant or emphasis than was intended or even present in that original.

So know that in this case, that is not an issue. Newsweek is the original source and the headline involved is theirs.

Okay, the story.

On January 9, there were a series of 13 special elections in Virginia, two for state Senate seats, 11 for ones in the state House of Delegates. How did Newsweek report the results? Here is the headline and first paragraph:

Republicans Annihilate Democrats in Virginia Election Sweep
Republicans scored massive victories in elections held in Virginia on Tuesday, returning two GOP politicians to local legislature following the departure of the incumbents.

So what, beyond the hyperbole, is wrong?

Not one of those 13 races flipped a seat! Not one! The magazine took advantage of two large wins by GOPpers, one in the Senate and one in the House, to use “annihilate,” “sweep,” and “massive” to describe the overall result and focus the first 13 graphs of a 17-graph story on those two races.  Even that overstates it, as the 11 House races were mentioned just once, in the 14th graph, with the final three being about Glen Youngkin, a Biden-Trump poll, and that Newsweek had asked state parties for more comment.

As if that wasn’t enough, the two “big” wins weren’t all that big when you consider that one of the winners had run unopposed in his last race and the other was replacing a GOPper who had retired and also had run unopposed last time. (Thank you, Ballotpedia and Wikipedia.) To say these districts are overwhelmingly GOPper borders on understatement, so the size of the victories were no surprise.

Such is the state of too much of our national news media, where the search from drama frequently outweighs being informative or even making a stab at balance. There is an old saying among newspapers that “if it bleeds, it leads.” A modern version might be using “tricks for clicks” because “if it shocks, it rocks.”

For the moment, though, we have “Newsweak.”

Free Speech: $35,000 and up

A GOPper in the Florida Senate by the name of Jason Brodeur has introduced a bill, SB1780, "that would deal a devastating blow to freedom of speech in the Sunshine State" in the words of The New Republic.

The bill would make calling someone a racist, sexist, homophobe, or transphobe "defamation per se," that is, by definition, making them grounds for a civil suit of "at least" $35,000 plus attorney's fees and court costs. At the same time, it would restrict defenses available to the target of such a suit by, for example, limiting who could be considered a "public figure" and making it easier to find "actual malice" in the accusation.

In the case of a transphobic or homophobic bigot, as Erin Reed noted, it's even worse.

The bill says that in cases of "sexual orientation or gender identity," a person can't defend themselves against a suit by "citing a plaintiff’s constitutionally protected religious expression or scientific beliefs" (lines 135-145). What that means, in practical reality, is that truth is no defense.

Bigot: "Homosexuals should be killed!"
You: "You're a bigot."
Bigot: "I'm suing you for defamation."
You: "But it's true! You are a bigot!"
Bigot: "Doesn't matter, that's my 'constitutionally protected religious expression.' Pay up."

Upon reading about this bill, I fantasized about someone saying this during debate:

"If it please the Chair, I rise to propose a friendly amendment to my esteemed colleague's bill, one to which I'm sure he'll agree as it pursues the same object of his own. The amendment would add to his list of terms to be presumptively defamatory accusations of 'groomer' and 'pedophile' plus claims of connections to 'the deep state,' in each case whether directed at an individual, group, or organization. I will yield to Mr. Broder for his response."

It wouldn't be accepted, of course, but it would serve to make the actual purpose of the bill even clearer than it already was.

One other thing: The bill is almost a carbon copy of one introduced last session, which died in committee. Hopefully this one will meet the same fate.

But if this did pass and was challenged in court, don't be surprised if the defense included claiming there is no First Amendment issue because the accusations aren't banned, the state is doing nothing to impede your speech, it's merely a matter of defining the legal meaning of certain terms. If the response is that there's a penalty for using those terms, the comeback would be "Maybe so, but the state isn't the one imposing the penalty, so nothing to do with us."

This style of argument - don't actually do it, just enable others to sue over it and so impose self-censorship - is central to the "Don't Say Gay" bill and Florida has become saturated with it even though the roots, if I recall correctly, lie in a Texas bill about abortion.

When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time

 When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time

The title of this post is a quote from Maya Angelou that seems especially appropriate these days, and I'm reminded of a letter-to-the-editor I wrote some time ago in response to a syndicated column by George Will, at the time regarded as pretty much the definition of a right-wing intellectual.

"Some time ago," indeed: The date of the letter is January 3, 1995. This is the unedited text:

To George Will (Boston Globe, January 2) goes the honor of being called an honest man. Cutting through the nonsense of Newt and company, he opens the heart of his cohorts' agenda: "'Back to 1900,'" he says, "is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

"Back to 1900." Back to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of child labor and twelve-hour work days. Back to a time before consumer or environmental protection laws, before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death. A time before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance.

"Back to 1900." Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition. Back before civil or voting rights laws, when wives were chattel, blacks were either "good n*****s" who got called "boy" or "uppity "n*****s" who risked being lynched, when racism (against Irish, Italians, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians, as far as "polite society" was concerned, didn't exist.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss. "Back to 1900" is indeed "a serviceable summation" of the right-wing's goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to selfishly benefit their morally stunted lives.

And if anyone thinks I'm too harsh, remember that Will's "summation" was offered as a moderate alternative to Christopher DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute, who proposed we "go back to the Articles of Confederation and start over." One wonders what, given the chance, they'd do with the Bill of Rights.

They told us. Believe them.

070 The Erickson Report for February 9 to 22

 

070 The Erickson Report for February 9 to 22

Episode 70 of The Erickson Report covers just two topics, the two we said last time we were going to address:
- guns, and
- attacks on Social Security.

[Sources used to follow shortly]

The Erickson Report is news and informed commentary. It is advocacy journalism, using facts and logic while never denying it has a point of view. We proudly embrace the description "woke" (“aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice" - Merriam-Webster dictionary).

Comments and responses are welcome either here or at whoviating dot blogspot dot com.

069 The Erickson Report for January 26 to February 8, Page Four: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

 Next, it's the much-anticipated return of Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages.

We start, as we usually do, with the Clowns, of which we have three.

First up, we have GOPper Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, who has vowed to start an "anti-woke caucus" to fight what he calls a "woke agenda" in Congress.

He said that the move would help crush the "doctrine" of "wokeness," necessary because, he whined in the most unintentionally-revealing remark in quite some time, "we no longer live in normal America."

Jeez, and they call us snowflakes.

He should call it the "Send in the Clowns" caucus. You know, "Don't bother, they're here."

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Next, we have a twofer. Two infamous anti-LGBTQ+ preachers, each of who has called for gay people to be executed, want their male followers to give up beer.

Steven Anderson, founder of the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist movement and pastor at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, and Jonathan Shelley of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Watauga, Texas, posted unhinged rants about how drinking beer is risky for men.

Why? Because beer has hops, of course. Uh, what? Y'see, hops contain a minute quantity of a phytoestrogen mimicker and so, according to our two Clowns, drinking beer will make you effeminate.

Friends, that is champion level Clown. And paranoia.

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The third one requires some background. COP, or Conference of Parties, is an annual multinational confab to see who has the best PR campaign claiming to be really really we really mean it committed to staving off climate change. COP28 is to take place in Dubai in late November.

Our clown here is US climate envoy John Kerry, who expressed his approval of the selection of Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil company, to preside over the meeting. Kerry justified his approval of al-Jabar by citing a recent speech al-Jaber gave.

Not very convincing, because in that very speech al-Jaber talked about how COP should “get it done across mitigation, adaptation, finance, and loss and damage” - which is less about preventing climate change than about learning to live with it - and the company he heads plans to increase its output of crude oil.

Activists rightly equated al-Jaber's choice to asking “arms dealers to lead peace talks.”

With John Kerry's approval. The act of a Clown.

069 The Erickson Report for January 26 to February 8

 

Episode 69 of The Erickson Report notes the anniversary of Roe v.Wade with some recent news on abortion rights, goes over how Medicare Advantage programs are actually backdoor ways to privatize Medicare, and reintroduces Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages, with three Clowns and the Outrage that is Florida.

The Erickson Report is news and informed commentary from the radical nonviolent left. It is advocacy journalism, dealing in facts and logic but having a point of view. Sometimes serious, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes even flip but always with the intent to inform and inspire,The Erickson Report strives to be a tool for justice

Reactions and comments are welcome.

SOURCES:

Guns
https://www.wbur.org/npr/1150667373/monterey-park-shooting-what-we-know-californi
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org
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Abortion rights
https://hymnary.org/text/onward_christian_soldiers_marching_as
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3809346-alabama-ag-says-women-could-be-prosecuted-for-taking-abortion-pills/
https://www.npr.org/2006/02/21/5168163/partial-birth-abortion-separating-fact-from-spin
https://www.alternet.org/minnesota-lawmakers-partial-birth-abortion/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/freedom-speech-mississippi-abortion-rights/671202/
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess124_2021-2022/bills/1373.htm
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and- analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-targeting-birth-control
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/13/23505459/supreme-court-birth-control-contraception-constitution-matthew-kacsmaryk-deanda-becerra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid's_Tale
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-nationwide-ban-abortion-introduced-us-senate
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-01-19/religious-leaders-sue-to-block-missouris-abortion-ban
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023%3A27-28&version=KJV
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Medicare Advantage / ACO HEALTH
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/is-medicare-advantage-a-scam
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/08/medicare-advantage-profit-scam-time-end-it
https://www.cms.gov/files/document/fy-2022-medicare-part-c-error-rate-findings-and-results.pdf-0
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/11/30/congress-asleep-switch-biden-continues-trump-era-ploy-privatize-medicare
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G8B012QNk9rzEJvfYaLcPwr2HJdZe_hcrR7KU_mAibk/edit
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-announces-increase-2023-organizations-and-beneficiaries-benefiting-coordinated-care-accountable
=
Clowns
https://www.newsweek.com/jim-banks-plans-anti-woke-caucus-bolster-gops-war-wokeness-1773778
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/01/hate-pastors-now-speaking-beer-say-makes-men-feminine/
https://sdg.iisd.org/events/2022-un-climate-change-conference-unfccc-cop-28/
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-politics-united-states-government-only-on-ap-john-kerry-b5d6482d465dcc8fa5063af9a0e44041
=
Outrage
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/florida-blocks-high-school-african-american-studies-class/ar-AA16x9Ds
https://www.commondreams.org/news/ap-african-american
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/574045-in-andrew-warren-suspension-trial-gov-desantis-officials-answer-what-does-woke-mean/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Maddox
https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-releases-results-of-diversity-and-inclusion-report/c-336511848
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2018/11/09/racism-lingers-for-nhl-players-60-years-after-oree-landmark/38451681/
https://www.rawstory.com/desantis-hockey/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl/nhl-backtracks-after-florida-gov-ron-desantis-office-blasts-league-for-discriminatory-job-fair/ar-AA16kkpL
https://www.queerty.com/florida-flop-ron-desantis-manages-show-off-anti-blackness-queerphobia-one-sentence-20230124
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/11-black-lgbtq-history-makers-you-should-know-n848631https://www.americanprogress.org/article/black-lgbtq-individuals-experience-heightened-levels-discrimination/

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23, Page 1: On the election results

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23, Page 1: On the election results

 

[This is a little different from the broadcast version, which was done the day after the election. It's essentially the same, but has in a few cases been updated to reflect later results.]

So. We had us some elections.

So I'll give you my comments on a rundown of the results.

I'll start by confessing I was concerned - to be honest, fearful - coming into this election because I was afraid the Dimcrats would blow it in the same way they blew 2016. That time, they managed to lose to the most unpopular major party presidential candidate in the history of such polling, one even less popular than Hillary Clinton, whose own approval was well under water.

They did it by making the central theme of their campaign "We're not Donald Trump. He's a scumbag, a creep, disgusting, so vote for us." Not that they never talked about anything else, but that was the primary approach, forgetting (or ignoring) the fact that not enough people cared; in fact, there were people who liked Tweetie-pie because of that, who thought "That's the kind of 'I don't give a damn' attitude we need more of in our leaders."

This time, they staked it all on reproductive rights, to the point where even as the burning anger over the Dobbs decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, faded some (as anger naturally does over time) and it appeared people were shifting their attention to economy and crime, party campaign consultants were telling candidates to just not talk about those issues, even though Dems had, particularly on the economy, good things they could say on their own behalf.

So it came as a great relief that this time around they did better than expected, indeed they held their own and even marked a few gains as the predicted "red wave" or "red tsunami" proved to be more of a pink ripple.

One reason for that is shown by exit polls that indicated that people who voted for Demcrats had reproductive rights and threats to democracy high on their list of concerns while GOPper voters were more focused on the economy and crime.

It was claimed that this validated the Democrats' strategy, but I'm not giving up on my own analysis quite so easily: Holding your own, not getting swamped, is hardly a stirring goal or a basis on which to build. I maintain that had they spent some of their time addressing those other issues, where again they did have
things to say for themselves - even on crime, on violent crime, which yes, had gone up recently but had already peaked and was starting to come down and in any event even at the peak was way below what it had been in the '90s - anyway, if they had spent just some time on those two points, they could have done better than just hold their own. We should have learned at least by the time of John Kerry's run that you can't let those sort of attacks go unanswered for weeks on end and expect that to not affect people. This time they ran the same risk - but they got away with it. Fortunately.

Anyway. The GOPpers, as expected, retook the House of Reperesentatives, with the breakdown now projected as 221-214, essentially the same majority the Dems had before.

It easily could have been worse, part of the reason the results are being called "better than expected." In each of the last four midterm elections, the president’s party has lost an average of about 37 House seats. In 2010 (Obama’s first midterm), Democrats lost 64 seats; in 2018 (Tweetie-pie's midterm), Republicans lost 42 seats.

This time, they lost about nine or ten, depending on the results of few campaigns that are still not called.

In the Senate, they actually stand to gain a seat. With wins in both Arizona and Nevada, they are guaranteed no worse that a 50-50 split, which leaves the Dems, as the party in the White House, in control because VP Kamala Harris would be the deciding vote in the case of a tie.

Meanwhile, Georgia is set for a run-off on December. You'd have to think that Raphael Warnock is the favorite not only because he came in first in the general, almost always an advantage, but because the third candidate in that race, a guy named Chase Oliver who got a couple of percent of the vote, presented a pretty liberal platform despite being a Libertarian, focusing more on civil liberties including - something I'd really like to see - an end to qualified immunity, so I expect that many of the people who voted for him, if they vote in the runoff, are far more likely to go for Warnock.

Which means the next Senate could easily be 51-49, which delights me because it would mean that on any given vote, either Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin could be told to go F themselves.

Okay, on some more general notes:

I enjoyed the tweet from Hannah Trudo, the senior political correspondent at TheHill.com, who said

The entire Bernie Sanders-aligned wing of the Democratic Party won tonight, from Fetterman in the Senate to the new Squad members in the House.

It's also important to note where the results came from: voters under 30. Not only did they turn out, they voted for Democrats by a net 28 percentage points, enough to offset the votes of those over 45.

As the Washington Post noted in an post-election article, voting took place against a background of increasing worry among Americans that US democracy is under threat. About 70% of voters in an exit poll said our degree of democracy is “very” or “somewhat” threatened.

Interestingly, the same poll said that about 80% of voters were "very" or "somewhat" confident that elections in their own state would be fair and accurate, which reminded me of all the polls about Congress where people would say how much Congress sucks but when asked about their own representatives, they'd say "Oh, they're okay. It's all those other ones who are lousy."

The important point, however, is that the Post looked at 569 GOPper candidates for state and federal office and found that 291 of them, 51% of the total, questioned or refused to accept that Joe Biden is the legitimate president and over half of that number, somewhere between 150 and 200, won.

A mitigating factor is that the vast majority of those who won were running for seats in the House, where they would have little involvement with or impact on the actual conduct of elections. And most of the them campaigned on a range of issues, so it's hard to say how much their wins translate into support for election denial in the general public.

They still could be an issue, however, as they will be a sizable majority within the House Republican caucus and so still could drive the selection of Speaker despite Kevin McCarthy having won an initial intra-party caucus - and the Speaker would in turn preside over the House in 2024, when the presidential vote could again be contested.

So while having those people win for the House is not as threatening, it's not non-threatening.

Better news is at the state level, where officers like governor, secretary of state, and attorney general have significant power overseeing and conducting elections. That is where the concern really is and there, happily, the elections deniers by and large lost. In Arizona, the heartland of paranoid election denial, it appears the whole slate of deniers went down.

This doesn't mean some of the deniers didn't get in, but not nearly as many as were feared.

But that doesn't mean the issue goes away. Even before polls closed and many states began releasing vote counts, far-right users in Telegram channels and other fringe forums were spreading conspiracy theories and trying to declare the midterm elections fraudulent.

Consider Maricopa County, the largest county is Arizona. They had a problem which was later shown to be a printing problem with the ballots such that the tabulating machines had trouble reading them. Officials announced they had a problem, explained what they were doing about it, which involved getting tech help from the manufacturers of the machines, and assured everyone not to worry, the ballots would still be counted because they had the paper ballots which if necessary could be counted by hand.

Which prompted wacko loser Kari Lake - who really is a Karen and who still has not conceded - to point to officials acknowledging a problem and specifying what they were doing to fix it as clear evidence of fraud. And she was not alone.

In response to such inanities, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, herself the target of such claims, noted that “There are always things that potentially could be seized upon that really have no impact" and aptly called the whole conspiracy claims "a political strategy that some have chosen to pursue to the detriment of who we are as Americans and our democracy.”

Since we talking now about the state level, its a good time to note that another surprise in the elections was that Democrats also over-performed at that level, including flipping a couple of legislative houses and winning two governorships along with increasing the number of states where they control both Houses and the governorship, the so-called trifecta. They still trail GOPpers in that measure, but no longer by as much.

One area that matters to me is the progressive prosecutors movement, comprised of those District Attorneys who make reform of the criminal justice system part of both their campaign platforms and their practice in office. They did rather well in the midterms, winning in places, as said by Lara Bazelon, director of the Innocence Commission inside the San Francisco DA’s Office, "purple and blue and even red."

The right wing had persistently tried to bury the movement under a barrage of "criminals running wild" rhetoric. After progressive Chesa Boudin was recalled from his position as San Francisco DA in June, a good deal of the media, always ready to be swayed by right-wing screeching, was prepared to declare the whole movement dead. The wing nuts failed and the media was wrong.

Meanwhile, the Dems were right about one thing: Protection of reproductive rights is broadly popular. Protection of such rights was on the ballot in five states. It won in all five.

Voters in California, Vermont, and Michigan added protections for reproductive rights to their state constitutions, while reliably red Montana and bright red Kentucky rejected measures that would have added restrictions to access to reproductive care, in Kentucky's case by proposing to specifically deny any state constitutional protections for abortion.

Include the vote in Kansas is August that rejected a ballot measure that would have given the state legislature the authority to restrict abortion access through a state constitutional amendment, and you have reproductive rights going six for six this election cycle.

On another matter, legalization of recreational marijuana was on the ballot in five states. Maryland and Missouri approved their measures, while Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota said no.

As of now, 21 states and Washington, DC, have legal recreational marijuana, something polls say 60% of the public supports. It is worth noting that in all three states that rejected the idea, medical marijuana is legal.

While I support legal grass and in fact have for oh my word over 50 years, it has never been high on my list of personal political priorities. So I want to mention that even as they rejected legal grass, the voters of South Dakota did something of more importance to me: By a hefty margin, they approved expansion of Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act. Some 40,000 people in South Dakota thus become eligible for Medicaid, many of who would not afford access to health care without it.

Finally on elections for now, something of which many of us are unaware: The 13th amendment did not ban slavery outright. It says:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [Emphasis added.]

That is, slavery can be a punishment for crime. Which is why there has been and continues to be forced labor in US prisons.

Today, such prison labor is a multibillion-dollar industry, with prisoners given the choice of working for pennies on the dollar or being punished by being denied phone calls and family visits or even being thrown into solitary confinement.

Nearly 20 states had language in their state constitutions permitting slavery and involuntary servitude for prisoners. On election day, voters in four of those states said "Not here, not any more." Voters in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont approved measures to remove the relevant language from their state constitutions.

A fifth measure, in Louisiana, failed only after its backers told people to reject it because they realized they had screwed up the legalese and it didn't clearly outlaw involuntary servitude.

Max Parthas, campaigns coordinator for the Abolish Slavery National Network, said his network hopes to have this on the ballot in a dozen states next election cycle.

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23

 

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23

This episode includes my reactions to some of the election news along with a follow-up to last episode's look at transgender rights.

Sources:

On the election results
shttps://www.aol.com/news/biden-white-house-cheers-red-155101989.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/here-are-all-the-fox-news-stars-who-promised-a-red-tsunami
https://www.aol.com/news/2022-midterms-republican-hopes-dashed-073721826.html
https://twitter.com/HCTrudo/status/1590222473215315970
https://twitter.com/dellavolpe/status/1590190476334096386
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/09/election-deniers-2020-house-senate-races/
https://www.aol.com/news/election-deniers-lose-key-races-200211432.html
https://www.aol.com/news/biden-hails-good-day-democracy-204536495.html
https://www.insider.com/far-right-donald-trump-voter-fraud-baseless-claims-midterm-elections-2022-11
https://www.aol.com/news/minor-poll-problems-twisted-false-181533639.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/09/election-deniers-2020-house-senate-races/
https://www.aol.com/news/democrats-outperform-expectations-state-legislatures-215022871.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/midterms_republicans_crime_public_safety_criminal
https://www.aol.com/news/kentucky-michigan-voters-approve-protecting-143639236.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3726347-voters-support-abortion-rights-in-all-five-states-with-ballot-measures/
https://www.aol.com/news/voters-approve-recreational-marijuana-maryland-151817054.html
https://www.aol.com/news/much-relief-south-dakota-voters-003234247.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/slavery-involuntary-servitude-rejected-by-4-states-voters/ar-AA13U7Fv

Transgender youth know who they are
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(18)30057-2/fulltext#sec3.3
https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00254-1/fulltext
https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/research/institutes/amsterdam-public-health/strengths/aph-cohorts/the-amsterdam-cohort-of-gender-dysphoria-.htm
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition-narrative-fueling-misconceptions-trans-advocates-say-n1102686

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10, Page 1: Attacks on transgender youth

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10, Page 1: Attacks on transgender youth

Let's start here with a basic fact: Treatment for gender dysphoria, that is, gender-affirming treatment and care, has deemed medically appropriate by literally dozens of health-related organizations including every major pediatric institution in the country, including:

the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
the American Academy of Pediatrics
the American Medical Association
the American Psychiatric Association
the American Psychological Association
National Association of Social Workers
the Pediatric Endocrine Society
the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine
and more than a dozen others.

Despite that, using the same devotion to facts and logic that enabled them to claim COVID was "just the flu" and to encourage infections by opposing mask mandates - the current death toll is approaching 1.1 million - GOPpers and other assorted proto-fascists have over the past two years directed levels of viciousness toward transgender youth that are nothing short of barbaric.

And it's gone from sneering to attacks about school sports to witch hunts about "grooming" to have reached levels of outright eliminationism.

Gender-affirming care is banned in Arizona and Arkansas; gender-affirming surgery for minors is a felony in Alabama; in Texas, state agencies are required to consider gender-affirming health care to be child abuse and anyone who provides it or supports children in accessing it a potential abuser. A bill passed the Idaho House to sentence health care providers who offered gender-affirming care to life in prison.

Note that some of these provisions and some of those in other states have been blocked by courts from going into effect, at least not yet, but that cannot deny either the intensity or the intent, marked perhaps most clearly by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who celebrated the passage of an anti-trans school sports bill by by directly comparing support for transgender rights to terrorism.

Meanwhile, in Congress, 50 House GOPpers, lead by QAnon butt-kisser Marjorie Taylor Greene, the brainiac who's against solar power because she thinks it doesn't work at night, are pushing a bill to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors nationwide, including a ban on any federal money for any form of such care, banning any coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and even requiring institutions of higher education not to offer any training on such care and accrediting agencies to refuse to accredit any institution or association that offers such care. Criminal penalties can range up to 25 years in the federal slammer. 

But on October 13, a group of Michigan Republican state representatives went all the way, introducing a bill that would see parents and health care professionals facing the treat of 25 years to life in prison for providing gender-affirming care to a minor. The bill would change the very definition of child abuse to explicitly include anyone who “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child.” "Procedure" is defined as including not only to gender-affirming surgery - which is very rare for teens - but also to hormone treatments and puberty blockers, even though such treatments are both harmless and completely reversible: You start to transition, decide you don't want to, just stop taking the meds and your body takes care of the rest.

GOPpers are the majority in the Michigan House and they are expected to throw full support behind the bill. The only sort of good news here is that if it passes both the House and the Senate, also controlled by GOPers, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would likely veto it - assuming she survives the dark money-funded assault from GOPper and all-around definition of right-wing fakery Tudor Dixon.

But that's not the worst, as the bill goes beyond that. It not only bars the provision of new treatment, it mandates that trans teens in the state who are currently receiving gender-affirming medical care be forced to stop their treatments and undergo compulsory medical detransition.

This is outright eliminationism. This is saying to trans youth "You are not allowed to be that way and we will force to you not be that way. You are not allowed to exist."

This at a time when the Trevor Project’s 2022 survey on the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth determined that more than 60 percent of LGBTQ+ youth said their mental health has deteriorated as a result of these sorts of attacks. Nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year, while 42% of youth who identified as LGBTQ+ contemplated suicide - a figure that rose to 52% for trans kids in particular.

And every one of those figures is worse for LGBTQ+ youth of color.

These laws, despite all their screeching about "Protect the children!" are going to see children die.

And you know, it's always about "The children! Think of the children!" It's what this sort of moral panic seems to be always about. From the Salem witch trials right up through in my lifetime comic books, rock and roll, day care centers, Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and the Internet, it keeps being about "Omigod the children!"

But there is a difference in this case. Most moral panics seems to emerge sort of organically. Somehow, a few people get an idea about something, it gets talked about so a few more hear about it and for some reason invariably related to broader social fears and stresses, it catches on and grows by feeding on itself in a feedback loop until at some point it burns itself out.

Not this one. There is nothing natural or organic about this one. This anti-trans panic has been manufactured, created, consciously and deliberately, top-down, by right-wing and repressive forces and their associated think-tanks to create fear and then exploit that fear purely for their own extremist self-interest.

David Neiwert has looked at and followed the topic of eliminationist rhetoric - that is, the use of expressions of "You do not have the right to be here" or even "You do not have the right to exist," for reactionary political gain - for years. He says "the entire point of such rhetoric is to create permission to direct violence freely at the targeted minority group."

Or, as in this case, the targeted group plus "anyone in the general vicinity," such as supportive teachers, parents, and health care professionals - and more recently, performers at drag shows reading to children - who are all either "groomers" or outright pedophliles or predators or all three, or in the case of drag show performers, also "perverts." And do not think for an instant that the overt physical intimidation directed at those drag shows by such as the Proud Boys, whose pride lies in being right-wing thugs, is not a manifestation of this eliminationism

For evidence this is all deliberate, we can look to a report from August out of The Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate looking at the increasing anti-LGBTQ+ hate rhetoric on social media and by the way thanks to David Niewert for the link and for more background on the issue.

The groups looked at tweets containing slurs like "groomers" or "pedophiles" in the context of conversations about LGBTQ+ people between January and July of 2022. There were nearly 990,000 of them - plus an additional 130,000-plus using the dismissive smear "ok, groomer."

One key finding was that after Florida Gov. Ron DeSandTick got his "Don't Say Gay" bill through, the rate of hateful tweets more than quadrupled, apparently because, I'd say, the bill's passage was felt to somehow legitimize the bigotry.

More significant, however, is the finding that much of the hate is being generated by a handful of well-known right-wing influencers. The researchers determined the 500 hateful “grooming” tweets had been viewed the most times had been viewed an estimated 72 million times and 2/3 of that total - 48 million views - were generated from just 10 people.

The top four contained no surprises:

Marjorie Taylor ColorOfNausea-Greene
James Lindsay, an “anti-woke” activist who described the pride flag as that of a "hostile enemy"
Lauren "Pistol-packin' mama" Boebert
and Chaiya Raichik, the sniggering clown behind the “LibsofTikTok” account.

Among the rest we find Ron DeSandTick press secretary Christina Pushaw, who pulled language right out of QAnon to take the "groomer" crap mainstream, two pundits for the far-right outfit Turning Point USA, one from BlazeTV, which is where you go if you ever wonder what the hell happened to Glenn Beck, and one from The Daily Wire, the reactionary "news" source founded by poster boy for privilege and winner of The Erickson's Report Clown of the Year 2019, Ben Shapiro.

In other words, a pretty standard collection of right-wing grifters, greedheads, and gasbags, backed by the usual band of bullshitters like the cretins at Faux News, which ran a series of shows on pedophilia in March and April, which included a guest on Fox and Friends claiming children were “being ripened for grooming for sexual abuse by adults” and another on America Reports insisting that affirmative care for trans children “goes beyond predatory grooming” into “psychological torture.”

The fact is, reactionary groups and movements like Christian nationalists - including fundamentalist preachers demanding that gay people be lined up and shot in the head - and neofascist white power groups like Patriot Front, with their individual ranges of ideological focuses, have banned together to wield “groomer” rhetoric like a bludgeon for one purpose only: As put by Justin Unga, the Human Rights Campaign's director of strategic initiatives, "pure politics," adding "It is no coincidence that people have inflamed and used this rhetoric during the period of the primary elections. They are," he said, "inflaming the most extreme elements of their fan base to gain notoriety, to build a brand that they see as politically and financially profitable."

In other words, it is about what the right wing is always about: greed, selfishness, egotism, and power-hunger.

These people don't give a single flying damn about the children they claim to be protecting. They don't care about the bullying, about the harassment, about the violence, about the suicides. They don't care about the prospect of children being ripped from supportive parents precisely because of that parental support - remember, in Texas and not only there, that's called child abuse. They don't care about the increase in hate crimes directed against gender nonconforming people. They do not care.

Because for them, these children aren't real, they are just cartoons, cardboard cutouts, stage props to be named, labeled, and moved around however they think it will produce the desired result in the audience. The realities of the lives of these children don't move them, the realities of their deaths move them even less. It's all about the posturing, the pose, the play.

If Diogenes were to move among these people I expect he would be very lonely and extremely disappointed. They are, in a word, despicable.

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10

This episode of The Erickson Report looks at what and who is behind the attacks on transgender youth before discussing the reaction to the letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus about trying to talk to Russia about Ukraine.

Sources:

- transgender youth
https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/doctors-agree-gender-affirming-care-is-life-saving-care
https://transhealthproject.org/resources/medical-organization-statements/
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home
https://theintercept.com/2021/04/01/trans-kids-rights-arkansas-gop/
https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1558596561461968900
https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3607955-marjorie-taylor-greene-introduces-bill-to-make-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-youth-a-felony/
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/13/anti-trans-bill-michigan/
https://michiganadvance.com/2022/10/13/parents-providing-gender-affirming-care-for-their-kids-could-get-life-in-prison-under-gop-bill/
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/assets/static/trevor01_2022survey_final.pdf
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/11/2115986/--Groomer-rhetoric-s-toxic-spread-on-social-media-revolves-around-10-key-far-right-influencers
https://hrc-prod-requests.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/CCDH-HRC-Digital-Hate-Report-2022-single-pages.pdf
https://twitter.com/anthonyLfisher/status/1539335893189804034
https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/2022-08/Report%20To%20The%20Nation8-4-22.pdf

- footnote
https://www.prri.org/research/americas-growing-support-for-transgender-rights/

- the CPC letter
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/25/house-progressives-letter-russia-ukraine-diplomacy/
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/obama-ukraine-congress-progressive-caucus/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/26/23423574/congressional-progressive-caucus-ukraine-russia-letter-diplomacy
https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1584921101020209152?s=20&t=nkp2E8WfEDpUTxTvcuHLEA
https://www.state.gov/625-million-in-additional-u-s-military-assistance-for-ukraine/
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/03/050-erickson-report-for-march-17-to-30_69.html
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/boris-johnson-pressured-zelenskyy-ditch-peace-talks-russia-ukrainian-paper
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/04/09/is-the-us-hindering-much-needed-diplomatic-efforts/

The Erickson Report is informed news and commentary from the radical nonviolent American left. Comments and questions are welcome. Please observe rules of courtesy.

059 The Erickson Report for August 11 to 24

059 The Erickson Report for August 11 to 24

Episode 59 of The Erickson Report
- takes A Longer Look at the "Inflation Reduction Act," including some of what's in it, the real cause for Joe Manchin's about-face, and the disastrous "side-deal" that secured it;
- presents two Clown Awards;
- has RIPs for Bill Russell and Vin Scully; and
- reminds us something that must never be forgotten.

The Erickson Report is produced and presented by Larry Erickson, a long-time political activist and proud member of "the woke mob." It is what's known as "advocacy journalism," dealing in facts and logic while never denying it has a point of view.

Comments and reactions are welcome.

051 The Erickson Report for March 31 to April 13

 

 

 

051 The Erickson Report for March 31 to April 13 

Issue 51 of The Erickson Report

- Some observations about the war in Ukraine

     Negotiations?

     Real cancel culture

- Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages

     Clowns: Sen. Rick Scott; Sen. Mike Braun; Irvington, NJ

     Outrage: SCOTUS takes another bite out of VRA

- Hero Award: Gov. Spencer Cox

- Noted in Passing

     states push to end limits on gay and bi men donating blood

     towns in western MA using alternatives to police on mental health crises

     the real reason for GOPper opposition to Ketanji Brown Jackson

043 The Erickson Report for December 2 to 15, Page Two: More on Critical Race Theory

We have an update or continuation of my discussion about Critical Race Theory.

This was prompted by the fact that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg recently gave a good example of the kinds of things CRT examines when he noted that systemic racism in the design and location of highways in American cities and suburbs continues to adversely affect low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

As a specific example, he pointed to underpasses along the parkways in the Long Island suburbs of New York City that were deliberately designed to be too low for buses for the specific purpose of keeping buses from bringing low-income - mostly non-white - city residents to Jones Beach.

Right-wingers first denied that was true and after having to admit it was, dismissed it as irrelevant because those underpasses were built 92 years ago.

But they're still there! That's the point: The racism of 92 years ago is still impacting people today.

They don't get it - and the truth is, they don't want to.

It's already become clear that the MAGA meatheads who rant and rave about CRT have no notion what it is, they can't explain it or describe it, they just know it's being taught in public schools and they are flat out against it, dagnabit - whatever the heck it is.

What's also becoming clearer is what the actual objection is. And it's not to CRT.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll a couple of weeks ago asked respondents: “How much do you think public schools should teach about how the history of racism affects America today?” Some 70% of the public said "a great deal" or "a good amount" while a majority of Republicans - 53% - said it should be taught "not so much" or "not at all."

As Laura Clawson of DailyKos putit, "That’s not an objection to critical race theory" but "an objection to kids learning that definitely within their grandparents’ lifetimes, the US had explicitly racist laws that have continuing effects today."

Hell, you don't even have to refer to continuing effects. A Monmouth University poll that came out a bit before the Washington Post/ABC News poll asked a slightly different question: "Should public schools teach the history of racism?" 43% of GOPpers disapproved - 34% disapproved strongly. Of just teaching historical reality.

And really, you can't even call it history not just because of the continuing effects of past racism but the reality of present-day racism as a fact of our society. Even leaving that aside, even if you leave immediate present-day considerations aside, it barely constitutes history rather than current events.

I'm going to use my life as a timeline.

- I was 12 when federal marshals had to escort a 6-year-old black child past screaming racist mobs so she could go to a newly-integrated school.
- I was 14 when Medgar Evers was assassinated.
- I was 15 when Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were murdered in Mississippi for trying to help black people register to vote.
- I was 15 when the Civil Rights Act was passed.
- I was 14 when MLK gave his "I have a dream" speech; 19 when he was murdered.

These events and others, were part of my growing up, they are part of my living memory. I know I'm old, but it still means that in an historical context, in a societal context, they are not that long ago.

And the fact is, at the very least a significant number among those who call themselves GOPpers don't want their kids to know about any of it. They don't want them to know about the segregated lunch counters and restaurants, the segregated waiting rooms, the segregated bus seating, the segregated schools, the segregated neighborhoods, the segregated drinking fountains, for pity's sake. They don't want them to know that as recently as 1967, 16 US states still had laws banning interracial marriage.

Because knowing would hinder their ability to continue to maintain their bigoted fantasy that they are the real victims, they are the truly oppressed, and racism longer exists - except, that is, for the "real" racism, which is directed against them.

It is depressing. And it is frightening.

041 The Erickson Report, Page 5: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

041 The Erickson Report, Page 5: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

Now for a regular feature, Two Weeks of Stupid, Clowns and Outrages. And we start, as usual, with the Clowns.

Our first Clown this time out is President Joe Coal Baron Manchin. After his event at the Economic Club of DC on October 26, three climate hunger strikers confronted him on his demand to cut climate provisions from the reconciliation package.

Manchin replied by asserting “the United States has done more than any other country. All the emissions are coming from Asia.”

So apparently all that West Virginia coal from which he gains a million a bucks a year from investments is being used for what, doing artists' sketches?

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Next there is Texas Republican state Rep. Matt Krause, who has a 16-page list of roughly 850 books and he intends to "investigate" to see if Texas school libraries might be harboring any of them.

Krause has used his position as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating to dispatch a letter wanting school districts to report whether they have any copies of any of the named books and if so, to report how many of them and how much money the district spent to get them.

Beyond such titles as The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the list, not at all oddly, seems obsessed with LGBTQ+ titles and ones about reproduction.

A peek under Krause's mattress might be interesting.

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Then there is the case of a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch uncovering a flaw in the website of Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that left the Social Security numbers for 100,000 staff members vulnerable. The information was contained in the html source code for the site.

The paper notified the agency and held the story until the agency had a chance to correct the error.

But it seems true that no good deed goes unpunished, because Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, apparently jealous of all the other GOPpes who've been awarded The Order of Big Red Nose, is vowing to prosecute the staff of the paper, charging they are "hackers" who "decoded" the source code to uncover the data. He claimed such an investigation would cost taxpayers $50 million.

Now, not only is that figure manifestly absurd, the thing is, the source code for a website is easily available to anyone with at most a couple of clicks because your own computer must have access to that information in order to display the web page correctly. Try it. Look for the Tools menu in your web browser, where you should find something listed like "View source code." In fact, if your browser is Firefox, just do control-u.

In other words, all this proves is that Mike Parson has absolutely no idea what hacking is.

I love this one because it gets back to the true meaning of Clown.

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But finally, sometimes it's hard to say if something is a Clown or an Outrage, it straddles the line between. Here's an example.

It's an unnamed teacher at Ridgefield Memorial High School in Ridgefield, New Jersey.

On October 18, Mohammed Zubi, A Muslim Arab-American senior at the school, asked for an extension on completing a math assignment. The teacher responded with 'We don't negotiate with terrorists."

Shortly after making the comment, the teacher supposedly told Zubi he did not “mean it like that.”

Excuse me, teacher person, but just how the hell did you mean it?

A supporting Clown award goes to the school administration which initially dismissed it as a “personal matter.” Only after the incident became known through social media did school board members take it seriously. In a statement a couple of days later, the district said it is conducting a full investigation and that the teacher in question has been suspended until further notice.