Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

Kevin McCarthy and the House GOP Circus of the Damned are running the psyop that they can pass a budget with no Democratic votes and force the Senate and Joe Biden to accept trillions in cuts that would tank the economy even worse than defaulting on the national debt.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his top lieutenants say they are actively preparing to move a party-line bill to raise the national debt limit if President Joe Biden continues to draw a firm line against talks with House Republicans to avoid the nation’s first-ever default.

The move would be a risky one. The GOP can only afford to lose four votes on any partisan plan, and thorny fiscal issues have long divided their party. House passage of a party-line bill would be difficult in the Democratic-led Senate where 60 votes would be needed to advance such a package.

But Republican leaders believe that their weeks of internal talks with the various ideological factions – known as the GOP’s five families – could produce a bill that would pass the House along party lines. And if the White House won’t negotiate, they believe they can put pressure on the Senate and Biden by passing a bill that would raise the debt ceiling and include budget cuts.

“I’m confident we can get there if we needed to,” Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, whom McCarthy selected to lead the internal GOP talks, said of a Republican-only bill.

Speaking to CNN and a small group of reporters, Graves said that moving a GOP bill is “absolutely an option on the table.”

McCarthy was even more bullish.

“Yes,” McCarthy said when asked if he believed Republicans would have the votes to approve a debt ceiling plan on their own.

“I think the markets will be excited here that one entity here is taking action,” McCarthy told reporters on Thursday.

Republicans say their first choice is to negotiate a deal with the White House.

“Mr. President, I’m ready anytime at any moment. I’ll come tonight,” McCarthy said, adding he would bring lunch or “would make it soft food if that’s what he wants.”

But Biden has called on the House GOP to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling without any conditions or strings attached to avoid the prospects of fiscal calamity, pointing to Congress approving a borrowing limit suspension three times under then-President Donald Trump. But this time, House Republicans say a clean debt ceiling hike simply won’t happen, given the mountain of debt the country faces.

The problem is McCarthy doesn't have to votes to pass this or any other bill with just Republican votes, and everyone knows it.  That's why the Biden White House is staying put.  If McCarthy actually could get the votes for this, he would have done it already and tole Biden that this was the new reality.

But that won't happen.  So we wait until McCarthy figures this out. The problem of course is that McCarthy is very stupid, and a miscalculation could lead to economic collapse. McCarthy's not bright enough to go to Biden himself and work this out, then getting Hakeem Jeffries to save his ass.

The odds of a default and economic catastrophe are extremely high, because the GOP side is run by idiots.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Big wins tonight in Wisconsin and Chicago.

Wisconsin roundly rejected Dan Kelly for state Supreme Court justice, and elected Janet Protasiewicz to swing the court over to a 4-3 liberal bent.

Janet Protasiewicz, a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, giving liberals their first majority on the state’s highest court in 15 years.

Protasiewicz defeated conservative Dan Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, on Tuesday in what became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history and one of the most closely watched elections of 2023.

Protasiewicz’s victory will allow the court’s new liberal majority to determine the future of several pivotal issues the bench is likely to decide in the coming years, including abortion rights, the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps and election administration — including, possibly, the outcome of the 2024 presidential race in the battleground state.

With 77% of the expected vote counted, Protasiewicz had the support of 56% percent of voters, while Kelly had 45% percent.

Conservative-leaning justices currently hold a 4-3 majority on the court. Protasiewicz will fill the seat being vacated by retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, giving liberals the majority for the first time since 2008. Protasiewicz was elected to a 10-year term.

Throughout her campaign, Protasiewicz made clear that her positions on many issues — most prominently abortions rights — aligned with those of the Democratic Party. She was endorsed in the race by the Democratic abortion rights group Emily’s List, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder and several other prominent Democrats.

Democrats in the state, and nationally, described the race as the most important one in the country this year and focused their messaging on emphasizing abortion rights and fair elections — extending a strategy the national party employed last year to fend off a red wave in the House and keep the Senate. The win by Protasiewicz suggests that the strategy continues to pay off for the party — a data point national Democrats will be all but certain to rely on heading into next year’s presidential election.

Another unabashedly liberal ran on abortion rights in purple Wisconsin and won handily. 

And in Chicago, unabashedly liberal Brandon Johnson won Chicago's mayoral contest.

Brandon Johnson, a union organizer and former teacher, was elected Chicago mayor on Tuesday, a major victory for the party's progressive wing as the nation's third-largest city grapples with high crime and financial challenges.

Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, won a close race over former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, who was backed by the police union. Johnson, 47, will succeed Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to be the city's mayor.

Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose her reelection bid when she finished third in a crowded February contest. The top two vote-getters, Vallas and Johnson, advanced to Tuesday's runoff after no candidate was able to secure over 50% to win outright.

Johnson's victory topped a remarkable trajectory for a candidate who was little known when he entered the race. He climbed to the top of the field with organizing and financial help from the politically influential Chicago Teachers Union and high-profile endorsements from progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders appeared at a rally for Johnson in the final days of the race.

It was a momentous win for progressive organizations such as the teachers union, with Johnson winning the highest office of any active teachers union member in recent history, leaders say. It comes as groups such as Our Revolution, a powerful progressive advocacy organization, push to win more offices in local and state office, including in upcoming mayoral elections in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

The contest surfaced longstanding tensions among Democrats, with Johnson and his supporters blasting Vallas — who was endorsed by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber's second-ranking Democrat — as too conservative and a Republican in disguise.

Among the biggest disputes between Johnson and Vallas was how to address crime. Like many U.S. cities, Chicago saw violent crime increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, hitting a 25-year high of 797 homicides in 2021, though the number decreased last year and the city has a lower murder rate than others in the Midwest, such as St. Louis.

Vallas, 69, said he would hire hundreds more police officers, while Johnson said he didn't plan to cut the number of officers, but that the current system of policing isn't working. Johnson was forced to defend past statements expressing support for "defunding" police — something he insisted he would not do as mayor.

Instead, he said, he planned to allocate more money to areas such as mental health treatment and youth jobs.

Vallas lost because of his decades-long history of school privatization, having left New Orleans' schools post-Katrina in a privatized charter school disaster area, resulting in the city's schools being placed under a federal consent decree for over a decade because of shameful treatment of special needs students, where it remains to this day. Entire schools have shut down and remain vacant as a result, and Vallas vowing to do to Chicago schools what he did to NOLA got his ass handed to him.

So yeah, big, big wins tonight.

People voted like their country depended on it.

The Biggest Of Book Bans

Missouri Republicans are eliminating all state funding for public libraries in retaliation for the ACLU suing the state over the state's recent book ban law in school libraries, and the results are going to be dozens of libraries shutting their doors for good.

 

Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.


ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined explicit sexual material as images “showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,” “sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,” or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.

“The house budget committee’s choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri’s public libraries is abhorrent,” Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard.

Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers – every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn’t have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June.

“State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities,” Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. “Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut.”

This is just cruelty and retaliation, but that's who Republicans are. The purpose of government is to punish your political enemies for daring to oppose you at all. And the fact that if this becomes law and the state's public library budget is zeroed out meaning libraries in the reddest, rural counties in Missouri will close, well, that's the point.

Last Call For That Debt Ceiling Feeling

The House Republican Freedom Caucus response to President Biden's proposed budget unveiled this week is "Cut it in half for starters and maybe we won't collapse the economy into a years-long depression."

A powerful group of far-right Republicans on Friday issued a new set of demands in the fight over the debt ceiling, stressing they may only supply their votes to raise the limit if they can secure about $130 billion in spending cuts, cap federal agencies’ future budgets and unwind the Biden administration’s economic agenda.

The ultimatum from the House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — threatened to deal a massive blow to government health care, education, science and labor programs. Seeking tougher work requirements on welfare recipients and the repeal of federal funds to fight coronavirus and climate change, the conservatives’ wish list appeared to complicate efforts to clinch a deal and avert a looming fiscal calamity.

At the heart of the political standoff is the debt ceiling, the legal limit on how much the U.S. government can borrow to pay for spending that policymakers in both parties have already approved. Congress must raise or suspend the current $31 trillion cap as soon as this summer or risk a default, an unprecedented crisis that could rattle markets globally while triggering a potential recession in the United States.

But Republicans have promised to use the fast-approaching deadline to extract fiscal reforms from the White House, many of which target President Biden’s signature economic priorities. Appearing at a news conference, Perry said the goal is to “shrink Washington,” and added: “Doing this will lower dollar for dollar the amount needed for any increase in the debt ceiling.”

The far-right caucus called for clawing back nearly $400 billion to boost clean energy and combat pollution in the Inflation Reduction Act, for example, and an end to the “student loan bailout,” as Perry described it, referring to the president’s debt cancellation measure, which is awaiting a Supreme Court ruling. They also targeted the roughly $80 billion recently approved to help the Internal Revenue Service pursue tax cheats, arguing it empowers the government to target innocent Americans. That move could add to the deficit, however, since it could prevent Washington from collecting money it is owed.

Conservatives further pushed for regulatory reform legislation, while emphasizing the need for tougher work requirements on food stamps, Medicaid and other programs that aim to help low-income Americans. Democrats contend these efforts could result in millions of deserving families being forced off federal benefits, since a wide array of federal anti-poverty initiatives already require beneficiaries to seek employment.

The demands served as a direct challenge to Biden, who has repeatedly pledged he will not haggle with Republicans over the country’s credit. Speaking at the White House later Friday, the president took aim at conservatives’ latest requests: He said it showed the “value set” the GOP had and predicted the impacts would fall hardest on police officers, firefighters and the nation’s health care.

“I don’t know [if] there’s much to negotiate on,” Biden said.

 

Meanwhile, the longer the debt ceiling fight goes on, the closer we get to an economic meltdown that will sink the US economy for years to come.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, meanwhile, appeared Friday on Capitol Hill to deliver her own urgent plea for action, citing the catastrophic ramifications if Congress fails to raise the debt limit in time. Appearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, she reminded lawmakers that the government has never defaulted — and doing so would “trigger an economic and financial catastrophe.”

The intensifying political stalemate capped off a week of mixed economic news in an ever-divided Washington. It began with a fresh warning from Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who on Wednesday signaled the central bank may have to raise interest rates more aggressively to keep tamping down inflation. Such a move could help lower prices by raising the cost of borrowing, at the risk of squeezing spending and investment in ways that could leave Americans out of work.

 

Jobs report today showed another 311k jobs created.  Where it goes from here, well, it seems like Republicans need to destroy that jobs streak in order to get elected...

Where The Books Come Burning Down The Plain

We've reached the point now where Republicans are openly banning library books, not just for kids, but for adults too.

 

A Republican-driven Senate bill limiting reading materials in school districts and public libraries has passed and is now on its way to the House floor.

Senator Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, is the author of Senate Bill 397.

He said the intention of the bill is to protect younger generations from reading inappropriate and “pornographic” material.

“This bill is not an attempt to ban books. It’s certain things you can’t get at school,” Sen. Warren said before the vote. “School boards, you ain’t exactly been hitting it out of the park lately. Maybe you could use a little help from some community involvement, some community empowerment.”

The bill would require schools and public libraries to inventory their current books both online and print.

Those books would then be categorized into so-called “ratings.”

Those ratings would include: Elementary (Pre-K through 5th grade), Junior High (6th-8th grade), Under 16, and Juniors and Seniors.

Some of that reading material would also require a legal guardian’s permission before being checked out.

“I think this is a good step in the right direction on making sure inappropriate materials stay out of the hands of kids, give guardrails to educators so they don’t go outside those and lose their job and inability to teach in Oklahoma when we struggle everyday to get new teachers,” said Sen. Rob Standridge, R-Norman.

Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, called the bill an “overreach of state government.”

Sen. Thompson said these types of decisions should be left to the school board and parents.

The bill doesn’t just outline minors, though.

Anyone over the age of 18 would also have limitations when checking out a book at a public library.

“No print or nonprint material or media in a school district library, charter school library, or public library shall include content that the average person eighteen (18) or older applying contemporary community standards would find has a predominant tendency to appeal to prurient interest in sex,” SB 397 reads.

Those books deemed inappropriate by community standards will then be removed, according to SB 397.

 

And pretty soon, the next step will be the sale of these books at all in the state, or the reading of them. Like I keep saying, Republican want a permanent end to the Civil Rights era and need a scared, uncurious populace to manipulate.

Last Call For The Huckster's Daughter

I guarantee you that Arkansas GOP Governor (and former Trumpian Mouth of Sauron) Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going to try to resolve the problems that her public education reform bill creates with her new law shredding child labor laws in the state.

 

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed into law this week legislation that rolls back significant portions of the state’s child labor protections.

The law eliminates requirements for the state to verify the age of children younger than 16 before they can take a job.

Sanders believes the provision was “burdensome and obsolete,” spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an emailed statement. Remaining state and federal regulations are still in effect, she said. Sanders signed the Republican-backed bill on Tuesday.

Federal officials have pledged to crack down on child labor law offenses after regulators discovered hundreds of violations in meatpacking plants and after press reports emerged of children working in hazardous occupations around the country.

The Labor Department fined Packers Sanitation Services, a subcontractor for meatpacking plants, $1.5 million in February for illegally hiring children, some of whom sustained chemical burns after working with caustic cleaning agents.

Other states are also considering loosening child labor protections. A bill advancing in Iowa would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants and would shield businesses from civil liability if a youth worker is sickened, injured or killed on the job.

 

As red state "education reforms" close down more and more schools and leave kids without an education, more and more of them are going to end up in meatpacking plants, factories, farms, construction work and more doing, as Dubya famously put it, "The jobs Americans don't want to do." 

Republicans understand full well that "school choice" means not everyone will get into the local magnate school with the swimming pool and media lab and the best teachers.  They understand full well that school funding will be decimated, and "failing" schools closed.

This will leave thousands of kids with no schools to attend. Eliminating child labor laws is the proposed solution. The school to prison pipeline is so 2016.

It's the school to meatpacking plant now.

Are there no workhouses?

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Increasingly, the GOP solution to America's increasing diversity is gerrymandering that leaves majority Black voters concentrated into a few precincts where the rest of the state can be safely ruled by white voters. The few instances where Black voters have concentrated power enough to elect Black Democratic leaders are now being systemically dismantled by subjecting those locations to state rule instead of local.

This is especially true in the South, where Black folk make up 20% of the population of a state rather than single digit percentages in other states.

 

Racial tensions in Mississippi echoed in Missouri Thursday, as Black Democratic lawmakers accused the state’s Republican House leadership of racism for shutting down a Black lawmaker’s speech and passing a bill that could strip power from the Black woman elected as prosecutor in St. Louis.

The discord in the Missouri House came just days after a similar situation in Mississippi, where Black lawmakers denounced the majority-white, Republican-led Legislature for voting to take power away from local leaders in the predominantly Black city of Jackson.

Like in Mississippi, Missouri’s legislature has a largely white Republican majority. Most of the Black lawmakers represent the state’s two largest urban areas of St. Louis and Kansas City.

Missouri Republicans have made anti-crime legislation a priority this session, often highlighting high crime rates in St. Louis as an impetus. The House passed legislation by a 109-35 vote that would allow Republican Gov. Mike Parson to appoint a special prosecutor to handle violent crimes in areas with high homicide rates, such as St. Louis. The bill also would expand mandatory minimum sentences for persistent felony offenders, among other things.

State Rep. Kevin Windham, a Black Democrat from St. Louis County, was reading aloud a news article about the Mississippi situation during the House debate when some white Republican lawmakers objected that his speech had nothing to do with the Missouri legislation.

House Speaker Dean Plocher ruled Windham out of order, halting his speech. Windham’s microphone was turned off. House Majority Leader Jon Patterson then made a motion to shut off debate on the bill, which the Republican majority voted to do — leaving other Black Democrats standing without getting a turn to speak.

 

Black voters elected Black leaders in Jackson,Mississippi and after the state's GOP all but assured that the city's water crisis would only get worse, Republicans then had the excuse they needed to put the city under receivership.

In Missouri, a Black prosecutor is being stripped of her power because of criminal justice reform.  Again, the solution is to put Black citizens under statewide white control because "they know best".

 

In Nashville, Tennessee, the state GOP legislature has introduced dozens of law punishing local Black government leaders in retaliation for the city withdrawing Nashville's consideration as host for the 2024 GOP National Convention.

In Tennessee, the latest statehouse backlash stems back to last summer when Nashville’s metro council spiked a plan to bring the 2024 Republican National Convention to the city. Progressive leaders argued that hosting the massive Republican gathering would go against the city’s values. Others expressed hesitation toward tying up so many city resources — particularly for an event that residents largely wouldn’t attend.

For GOP leaders, who had spent months lobbying and wooing party officials on why Music City should host the convention, Nashville had crossed yet another line. Warnings began trickling in that consequences were imminent.

Nashville continued to attract political ire after council members began discussing whether to cover expenses for employees who cross state lines to get an abortion. That’s because Tennessee’s abortion ban — which was enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — currently has no explicit exemptions.

Lawmakers have been swift in filing bills that offer retribution. Legislation has been introduced that would slash Nashville’s 40-member city council in half. A separate bill would give the state control of the governing board for the city’s airport, stadiums and other landmarks, while another proposal would remove Nashville’s ability to charge the tax that funds its convention center. Republicans then introduced a bill that would block cities from using public funds for reimbursing employees who travel to get an abortion.

Advocates have raised alarm at lower-profile bills, like the proposal to eliminate all police oversight boards in Tennessee. Nashville has one, and lawmakers already restricted it under a 2019 law. Some Republicans have proposed a bill that would rename a portion of Nashville Rep. John Lewis Way to Trump Boulevard.

Specifically, the effort to cut Nashville’s abnormally large city council has sparked some of the fiercest concerns, as advocates warn that doing so will undo representation of minority communities and erode council members’ ability to address constituent needs.

“When people reach out to us about trash pickup, about deaths in their family, about needing things and resources, these are individuals that we are in community with,” said Delishia Porterfield, who has served on Nashville’s council since 2019. “And when you raise the number of constituents that we as council members serve, not only do you make our jobs harder, but you make us further from the people that elected us to serve.

Nashville has a combined city-county government has operated under a 40-member council — significantly larger compared to even more populous cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco — since 1963, when leaders were wrestling with consolidating the city with the surrounding county, and others were working to ensure Black leaders maintained a strong representation inside the southern city.

“When the city was consolidated, and the size increased to 40, there was a promise that we would have more Black representation,” said Democratic Rep. Harold Love Jr., whose father was among the first Black members to be elected to the newly expanded city council in 1963.

“So for me, there are some deep historical ties to the size of metro council when it comes to Black and minority representation that I hope my colleagues would understand,” he said. 

 

Your GOP colleagues understand perfectly. You will never have the power to resist them again. They will take everything from you. It's the new Jim Crow, and the Roberts Court will never stop it.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

Tennessee's GOP Speaker of the House wants to stop taking nearly 2 billion in federal education money so the state can be "free of Washington's influence" and, you know, not have to have schools that serve the poor, disabled, or non-English speakers or any of that equality crap.

 

One of Tennessee’s most influential Republican lawmakers says the state should stop accepting the nearly $1.8 billion of federal K-12 education dollars that help provide support for low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton told The Associated Press that he has introduced a bill to explore the idea during this year’s legislative session and has begun discussions with Gov. Bill Lee and other key GOP lawmakers.

“Basically, we’ll be able to educate the kids how Tennessee sees fit,” Sexton said, pointing that rejecting the money would mean that Tennessee would no longer have “federal government interference.”

To date, no state has successfully rejected federal education funds even as state and local officials have long grumbled about some of the requirements and testing that at times come attached to the money. The idea has also come up elsewhere in recent months among GOP officials, including in Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Many Republican politicians and candidates at the federal level have also made a habit of calling for the outright elimination of the U.S. Department of Education.

According to Sexton, Tennessee is currently in the financial position to use state tax dollars to replace federal education funds. He pointed to the $3.2 billion in new spending outlined in Gov. Lee’s recent budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year as proof that the state could easily cover the federal government’s portion.

Federal dollars make up a small slice of Tennessee’s K-12 education funding, which had an almost $8.3 billion budget as of fiscal year 2023. Yet the federal money is seen as a key tool to supporting schools in low-income areas and special education.

Sexton says he has been mulling the proposal for a while, but this week, he publicly touted the idea in front of a packed room full of lawmakers, lobbyists and other leaders at the Tennessee Farm Bureau luncheon on Tuesday.

“We as a state can lead the nation once again in telling the federal government that they can keep their money and we’ll just do things the Tennessee way,” Sexton said at the event. “And that should start, first and foremost, with the Department of Education.”

 

The goal is of course not having programs, classrooms, or schools that server those student at all, and the state would be under no influence to do so.

Now, here in the real world, Tennessee taxpayers would continue to have to pay federal taxes, they'd just get much less in return. Fine with me, except the state will turn around and prey on the most needful among them.

The bigger issue is that Republican state governments really do want to reenact 1861 again. They don't want to be a part of a diverse country, they want to be a part of a White supremacist Christian country, where the "Christian" way of giving to the needy comes with God's strings attached, and or bullets.

 

Fine if they lose, but not if it costs us, you know, 5% of the population.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

Kentucky Republicans are jumping on the assault on public education pain train in a big way as the General Assembly returns this week, with new legislation that would allow individual parents of schoolkids to sue school districts if they object to any part of their child's curriculum and the district doesn't change it.

 

HB 173 states parents should have the right to make decisions for their child “without obstruction or interference from a public school.” As long as the student meets the compulsory attendance rules under state law, that student should be educated how the parent sees fit, the measure asserts.

Guardians should have the “high duty and right to nurture and direct their children's destiny, including their upbringing and education; mental, emotional, and physical health care; and moral and religious development,” the bill continues.

HB 173 outlines a system for local school boards to receive complaints about violations of parents’ rights. If districts don’t respond according to the process, the parent can sue.

Parents would also be able to review any student well-being surveys, curriculum, books or course syllabi. They would also have the right to consent on their child’s behalf to participate in a number of things, including surveys and regular classroom interactions where a journalist may be present.

Almost every non-emergency health procedure, including mental health sessions with school counselors, would need a parent’s blessing.

Under HB 173, school staff would be required to inform parents if their child starts dressing in a way that doesn’t correspond with their gender or asks to use different pronouns or a name other than their assigned name ― a move that goes against state education guidance on how to best work with transgender students.

Districts would be required to prohibit trainings where teachers would be encouraged to use a student’s chosen name or pronouns, or touch on “critical race theory” topics such as white supremacy.

Schools would also no longer be allowed to require masks or any type of vaccination.

HB 173 also includes language to a previously filed “bathroom ban,” barring trans students from using the restrooms aligned with their gender identity.

Under the measure, which is 27-pages-long, parents would also have the right to have their child spend their day learning the assigned curriculum with “no time spent being indoctrinated into any partisan political position.”

It bars any discussion of gender expression inconsistent with biological sex, sexual orientation or sexual expression, including in classes and from teachers’ and speakers’ personal experiences. Teachers also could not display LGBTQ pride flags.

The bill clarifies teachers can talk about their legal spouse but should not discuss their sex lives with students.

 

I remind you that this bill was introduced, along with a state Constitutional referendum allowing charter schools to get state education money at the direct expense of public schools, at a meeting of the Kentucky House Education Committee which was discussing the state's existing critical teacher shortage. 

The bill doesn't exist to "put the power in the hands of parents, it's there to end public education by making it so litigious to operate a public school district that they can't actually educate kids, instead all your education tax dollars going to constant legal battles and defending parental lawsuits.

Florida's gutting of public education is only the beginning. Kentucky Republicans may actually dismantle the system entirely and surpass even Ron DeSantis.

A Taxing Problem, Black Taxpayers Matter Edition

Black taxpayers are three times more likely than white taxpayers to face IRS audits, even adjusting for all other factors, and the system has been designed to do that in the wake of Republican cuts to the agency.

 

Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service as other taxpayers, even after accounting for the differences in the types of returns each group is most likely to file, a team of economists has concluded in one of the most detailed studies yet on race and the nation’s tax system.

The findings do not suggest bias from individual tax enforcement agents, who do not know the race of the people they are auditing. They also do not suggest any valid reason for the I.R.S. to target Black Americans at such high rates; there is no evidence that group engages in more tax evasion than others.

Instead, the findings document discrimination in the computer algorithms the agency uses to determine who is selected for an audit, according to the study by economists from Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and the Treasury Department.

Some of that discrimination appears to be rooted in decisions that I.R.S. officials made over the past decade as they sought to maintain tax enforcement in the face of budget cuts, by relying on automated systems to select returns for audit.

Those decisions have produced an approach that disproportionately flags tax returns with potential errors in the claiming of certain tax credits, like the earned-income tax credit, which supplements low-income workers’ incomes in an effort to alleviate poverty. Those tax returns are more often selected for audits, regardless of how much in owed taxes the agency might recover.

The result is audit rates of Black Americans that are between three and five times the rate of other taxpayers, even when comparing that group to other taxpayers who also claim the E.I.T.C.

The I.R.S. does not detail how it selects returns for audit. But the researchers were able to isolate several apparent explanations for why Black taxpayers are targeted so much more frequently. One is complexity: It is much harder for the agency to audit returns that include business income, because that process requires expertise from individual auditors. Such returns appear to be audited less often than returns from otherwise similar taxpayers who do not report income from a business.

Black taxpayers are far less likely than others to report business income. And Black taxpayers appear to disproportionately file returns with the sort of potential errors that are easy for I.R.S. systems to identify, like underreporting certain income or claiming tax credits that the taxpayer does not qualify for, the authors find.

In effect, the researchers suggest that the I.R.S. has focused on audits that are easier to conduct and as a result, finds itself disproportionately auditing a historically disadvantaged group rather than other taxpayers, including high net-worth individuals.

“What the I.R.S. chooses to focus on when it conducts audits can either undercut or complement our progressive tax system,” said Daniel Ho, an author of the study who is the faculty director of Stanford’s Regulation, Evaluation and Governance Lab, known as RegLab, where the study originated.

 

Auditing low-income taxpayers is much, much easier than auditing high-income taxpayers, and the poorest taxpayers are much more likely to be Black.

 

In other words, decades of systemic Black poverty makes Black folk easier targets for the IRS to pick on. We're the low-hanging fruit and the easiest to beat more money out of.

God forbid the IRS went after, say, Donald fucking Trump or Elon Musk, right?

No wonder Republicans want to eliminate the IRS and drop a 30% sales tax on everyone. They want to provide "subsidies for the poor" but of course red states will simply refuse to have that particular program for anyone, and surprise, it's as regressive as it gets.

The cruelty skips the middleman.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

House GOP "moderates" are making it clear that there will be trillions in cuts to social programs, education, infrastructure and health care or they will crash the economy and throw us into a depression.

 

House Republicans from swing districts are flatly rejecting the White House’s position that there be no negotiations with Congress over raising the national debt ceiling, insisting that they won’t bend to the Democrats’ take-it-or-leave-it approach to avoid the first-ever debt default with no conditions attached.

The Republicans, many of whom hail from districts that President Joe Biden won or narrowly lost and are seen as the most likely to break ranks with their party’s leadership, said they are not willing to back a “clean” debt ceiling increase, insisting there must be some fiscal agreement first. That view is in line with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is calling for negotiations with the White House before a possible default occurs later this year.

But the White House and Senate Democratic leaders, wary of the ferocious fiscal fights with the House GOP that dogged then-President Barack Obama, see little upside in giving in to any of the GOP demands to impose spending cuts on domestic programs, believing instead that McCarthy and Republicans will cave facing the prospect of a looming default and with no viable legislative alternative.

The White House is badly miscalculating, Republicans say.

“I don’t think that a clean debt ceiling is in order, and I certainly don’t think that a default is in order,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate whose Pennsylvania district Biden carried, told CNN, indicating he planned to engage in bipartisan talks next week over a compromise proposal when lawmakers return to Washington.

The early back-and-forth underscores how Washington is heading into a period of deep uncertainty with global ramifications – with a newly empowered House GOP majority eager to use its leverage in the debt limit fight to enact priorities that otherwise would be ignored by the Democrats running the Senate and the White House. Some congressional sources in both parties believe that McCarthy may ultimately be jammed by the Senate and forced to vote on a bipartisan compromise crafted in that chamber, though that scenario would take weeks if not months to play out.

o work around McCarthy, Democrats would need to win over some potential GOP swing votes to sign on to a “discharge petition,” which could force a House floor vote if six Republicans signed on to the effort with the 212 Democrats currently in the chamber.

Republicans insist there’s little chance of that tactic succeeding at the moment – especially if it’s to force a vote on a clean debt ceiling increase with no other conditions or concessions.

“I’m not in favor of Biden’s no-negotiating strategy, and I’m not inclined to help,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican whose Nebraska district Biden carried, indicating Republicans campaigned against government spending and inflation. “The GOP can’t demand the moon, and Biden can’t refuse to negotiate. There needs to be give-and-take on both sides.”

Bacon said there needs to be “good faith” talks with the White House and some “commitment for fiscal restraint” before he would even consider signing onto a discharge petition.

 

The problem is there is no Republican "good faith" effort.  It's trillions in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, schools, roads, bridges, food stamps, health care, you name it, House Republicans are going to get rid of it.

The second Biden gives in to these terrorists, America will collapse.  Luckily, the White House and Democrats have a couple months to go around and say "Look, these guys are going to crash the economy, cost us millions, maybe tens of million of jobs, wipe out benefit programs that you've earned and paid for, and for what?"

We'll see where we go on this, but we're at the point where both parties believe they have already won the argument, and that's just not true.

 

Last Call For Sick Of It All

More than one-third of Americans put off health care in 2022 due to medical inflation and red states cutting back on Medicaid.

 

The percentage of Americans reporting they or a family member postponed medical treatment in 2022 due to cost rose 12 points in one year, to 38%, the highest in Gallup’s 22-year trend.

Each year since 2001, Gallup has tracked Americans’ self-reports of delaying medical care in the past 12 months due to cost. The latest reading, from Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare poll conducted Nov. 9-Dec. 2, is the highest by five points and marks the sharpest year-over-year increase to date.

This change came amid the highest inflation rate in the U.S. in more than 40 years, which made 2022 a challenging year for many Americans. A majority of U.S. adults have said inflation is creating at least a moderate hardship for them. The public continues to view the state of the U.S. economy negatively, and Americans were more likely to name inflation as the most important problem facing the U.S. in 2022 than at any time since 1984.

The latest double-digit increase in delaying medical treatment came on the heels of two consecutive 26% readings during the COVID-19 pandemic that were the lowest since 2004. The previous high point in the trend was 33% in 2014 and 2019. An average 29% of U.S. adults reported putting off medical treatment because of cost between 2001 and 2021.

Americans were more than twice as likely to report the delayed treatment in their family was for a serious rather than a nonserious condition in 2022. In all, 27% said the treatment was for a “very” or “somewhat” serious condition or illness, while 11% said it was “not very” or “not at all” serious. Since 2004, more U.S. adults have said the medical care needed was for a serious than nonserious condition, but the 16-point gap in the perceived seriousness of forgone treatment in 2022 is the second largest on record to a 17-point gap in 2019.

Lower-income adults, younger adults and women in the U.S. have consistently been more likely than their counterparts to say they or a family member have delayed care for a serious medical condition.

In 2022, Americans with an annual household income under $40,000 were nearly twice as likely as those with an income of $100,000 or more to say someone in their family delayed medical care for a serious condition (34% vs. 18%, respectively). Those with an income between $40,000 and less than $100,000 were similar to those in the lowest income group when it comes to postponing care, with 29% doing so.

Reports of putting off care for a serious condition are up 12 points among lower-income U.S. adults, up 11 points among those in the middle-income group and up seven points among those with a higher income. The latest readings for the middle- and upper-income groups are the highest on record or tied with the highest.

 

Rural hospitals are closing by the dozens, leaving people without basic health care options in hundreds of US counties. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical company revenues were nearly $2 trillion worldwide in 2022, with record-shattering profits.

Health care in America is still very much broken.

School Daze, Con't

Stephanie Saul at the NY Times argues that colleges and universities admissions departments need to prepare now for the end of affirmative action by the Roberts Court later this summer.

In cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court is widely expected to overturn or roll back affirmative action in college admissions. Many education experts say that such a decision could not only lead to changes in who is admitted, but also jeopardize long-established strategies that colleges have used to build diverse classes, including programs that are intended to reach specific racial and ethnic groups for scholarships, honors programs and recruitment.

Those rollbacks could then help spur colleges to end other admissions practices that critics say have historically benefited the well-heeled. Some schools have already ended their standardized test requirements and preferences for children of alumni. There is also pressure to end early decision, which admits applicants before the general deadline.

College officials warn that there is no way of knowing how sweeping the court decision will be. But the ruling, expected by June, is likely to have a broad impact on a range of schools, according to Vern Granger, the director of admissions at the University of Connecticut.

“Most people are thinking about the admissions process at selective institutions,” he said, “but I would say that this decision is going to be far-ranging and it’s going to be expansive.”

The cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, first filed in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group, argued that the universities discriminated against white and Asian applicants by giving preferences to Black, Hispanic and Native American students. The universities said they use race-conscious admissions because diversity is critical for learning, a claim that drew skepticism from the court’s conservative supermajority during the October hearing.

Recent polls suggest that most people believe colleges should not consider race or ethnicity in admissions decisions.

If the court rules as expected, the class admitted for the fall of 2024 will look quite different, education officials said.

“We will see a decline in students of color attending college before we see an increase again,” said Angel B. Pérez, the chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “We will be missing an entire generation.”

Mr. Granger, who also serves as president of the association for college admission counseling, expects changes even at the community college level. Citing drops in applications following statewide bans on affirmative action in Michigan and California, he said that some students from underrepresented groups may simply not apply.

The institutions most likely to be dramatically affected are the 200 colleges and universities regarded as “selective” — meaning they admit 50 percent or fewer of their applicants. And for smaller, highly selective liberal arts colleges, like Wesleyan, the impact on college culture could be particularly noticeable, as professors on these tightly knit campuses say their small classes thrive on interactions by a diverse group of students.

A group of 33 of these schools submitted a brief in August to the Supreme Court. Some of them had graduated Black students even before the Civil War.

“The probability of Black applicants receiving offers of admission would drop to half that of white students, and the percentage of Black students matriculating would drop from roughly 7.1 percent of the student body to 2.1 percent,” the brief said, predicting a return to “1960s levels.”

 

Which is the point. Black and Hispanic Gen Z kids, already having their educations the most affected by Covid measures, will have a far tougher time in college in the future. It's going to unwind sixty years of progress for us, because white conservatives don't want educated Black and Hispanic kids, they want subservient ones. 

If you think the wealth gap between Black and white families in America is bad now, give it ten years, when the admissions rates for Black students are down to the low single digits in most colleges, and HBCUs will rapidly be forced out of business by GOP education cuts. Give in ten years to see that college admissions for Black students will be in the low single digits again, and graduation rates will be statistical blips.

"Capitalism needs that underclass" is America's legacy for the last four centuries.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition

House Republicans are planning to destroy the economy entirely in order to strip funding from Medicaid, infrastructure, and everything else that the Biden administration passed last year.

House Republicans are preparing a plan telling the Treasury Department what to do if Congress and the White House don’t agree to lift the nation’s debt limit later this year, underscoring the brinkmanship newly empowered conservatives will bring to the high-stakes negotiations over averting a U.S. default, according to six people aware of the internal discussions.

The plan, which was previously unreported, was part of the private deal reached this month to resolve the standoff between House conservatives and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over the election of a House speaker. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a leading conservative who helped broker the deal, told The Washington Post that McCarthy agreed to pass a payment prioritization plan by the end of the first quarter of the year.

The emerging contingency plan shows how Republicans are preparing to threaten to not lift the nation’s debt ceiling without major spending cuts from the Biden administration. Congress must pass a law raising the current limit of $31.4 trillion or the Treasury Department can’t borrow anymore, even to pay for spending lawmakers have already authorized. Economists warn that not raising the debt limit could cause the United States to default, sparking a major panic on Wall Street and leading to millions of job losses.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said Friday said that the Treasury Department will begin “extraordinary measures” next week to ensure the federal government is able to meet its payment obligations but that it cannot guarantee the United States will make it beyond early June without defaulting. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated Friday that the administration will not negotiate over the debt ceiling.

Treasury Department aides declined to comment on the GOP plan, and a spokesman for McCarthy did not return requests for comment.

Understand that if the debt ceiling breaches, the economy collapses. These idiots are about to destroy the country's economy for years, if not decades. Massive inflation, interest rate hikes, and unemployment going fro 4% to 14% overnight is just the beginning.

In the preliminary stages of being drafted, the GOP proposal would call on the Biden administration to make only the most critical federal payments if the Treasury Department comes up against the statutory limit on what it can legally borrow. For instance, the plan is almost certain to call on the department to keep making interest payments on the debt, according to four people familiar with the internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. House Republicans’ payment prioritization plan may also stipulate that the Treasury Department should continue making payments on Social Security, Medicare and veterans benefits, as well as funding the military, two of the people said.

Such a move would be unprecedented and hugely controversial, and even releasing the plan could turn into a major political liability for the GOP. A hypothetical proposal that protects Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and the military would still leave out huge swaths of critical federal expenditures on things such as Medicaid, food safety inspections, border control and air traffic control, to name just a handful of thousands of programs. Democrats are also likely to accuse Republicans of prioritizing payments to U.S. bondholders — which include Chinese banks — over American citizens.

“Any plan to pay bondholders but not fund school lunches or the FAA or food safety or XYZ is just target practice for us,” a senior Democratic aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a proposal that hasn’t yet been released publicly.

McCarthy and House conservatives intentionally left the details of the prioritization plan unsettled in their initial agreement, with the understanding that it could take weeks for Republicans to decide which federal spending programs must be protected, the two people familiar with the talks said, and amid uncertainty about the best way to draft the legislation.

 

So the House GOP will decide who lives and who dies. Millions, maybe tens of millions, will be out of work. Entire government departments will be shut down and the impact of misery will be immediate. There's no way these clowns will get a loaded revolver pointed at Uncle Sam's head through the Senate, let alone Biden's desk, so we're looking at a wipeout of trillions of dollars.

 

Not to mention that the secondary knock-on effects will trigger economic disasters across the country. It will be absolute chaos, and people will suffer and die as a result.

 

They'll blame Biden for it. They won't be able to "prioritize" a damn thing, because the economy will break completely.

We warned all of you this was coming, and people voted to break the government anyway.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

In a Friday Night News Dump™ crapped out late last week while the world was watching our dysfunctional House GOP Circus of the Damned and laughing at Kevin McCarthy openly for his stupidity, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his own coming Pyrrhic humiliation at the hands of Disney and invited everyone to pull up a seat for the show.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will seek to bring Disney's special governing district under direct state control in a bid to end the entertainment giant's multi-decade arrangement with the Sunshine State.

DeSantis is expected to appoint a new board to control Reedy Creek, the self-governing area that is currently de facto run by The Walt Disney Company, and allows it to maintain its own infrastructure and public services. Created in 1967, the district also allows Disney to raise taxes and issue bonds to finance the expenses required to run services for Walt Disney World resort.

“The corporate kingdom has come to an end," said DeSantis's communications director, Taryn Fenske, in a statement. "Under the proposed legislation, Disney will no longer control its own government, will live under the same laws as everyone else, will be responsible for their outstanding debts, and will pay their fair share of taxes."

Fenske added that a state-controlled board would also ensure that neighboring Orange County cannot use Reedy Creek-related issues "as a pretext to raise taxes on Orange County residents.”

Fox News first reported the Friday development, citing sources in DeSantis' office. In a document posted to the website of Osceola County, which also borders Orange County and Reedy Creek, notice was given that the proposed legislation would leave no current aspect of Reedy Creek untouched.

Florida legislators already voted in a special session last year to dissolve all special districts like Reedy Creek in Florida by June 2023. It was not immediately clear how that earlier vote would impact the new proposal.

 

DeSantis is clearly betting that he has better lawyers than Disney, and there's tens of billions of dollars at stake here. He's expecting Disney to surrender and for his army of trolls to attack the company until they do. Maybe there's a deal in the works, but I'm betting this fight is going to last years and cost both sides buckets of cash...which is what DeSantis wants anyway.

 

This is going to be nasty, especially if you live in central Florida, because it's going to be the people of the Orlando area who are going to definitely suffer the most when DeSantis wrecks the economy there for good.

Sunday Long Read: The Streets Of L.A.

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from the award-winning team at California non-profit news outlet Capital & Main, where Ethan Ward gives us the hard truth of trying to find a place to live in Los Angeles even when you make $24 an hour and would have a fairly decent life anywhere else.

 

Beneath a glaring porch light over her grandmother’s driveway, Sarah Fay is on her smartphone, searching once again for a place to sleep for the night.

As is often the case when she needs a place and has not already burned through the last of her monthly income, the 28-year-old scrolls through Priceline.com in search of a bed and four walls.

Sarah could lie down on a makeshift bed surrounded by storage boxes and bowls to feed two dogs in her grandmother’s uninsulated two-car garage — and sometimes she does. But that means lying feet away from her 64-year-old mother Karon Fay, who has been sleeping there for more than a dozen years. Sarah’s grandmother says that her granddaughter has always been welcome to stay in the cluttered garage, but the situation is more complicated. Sarah’s cigarette-smoking mom, who wrestles with breathing problems — as her oxygen mask makes clear — already lives in there. Karon also tries to manage her diagnosed bipolar disorder, but that doesn’t always go so well, her daughter suggests.

Sarah has tried for the past four years to find an apartment — her last steady residence was her college dormitory. When Sarah needs to get away from her mother and the rest of her life on the periphery of her grandmother’s one-story ranch home in Culver City, California, she splurges on a motel. When she doesn’t have the money, she gets more resourceful. She will sleep in her 2018 black Ford SUV, which she is still paying off. When it is not too cold, she pitches a green pop-up tent on the beach in Playa Del Rey. But most nights, Sarah closes her eyes in the garage next to her mother — and hopes for the best.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines “homeless” through four categories. Sarah does not fit the most dire category of “Literally Homeless,” which is generally those who live in public places or shelters. She likely could fall into the next tier, “Imminent Risk of Homelessness,” typically someone who will “imminently lose their primary nighttime residence” and lacks the resources to get permanent housing. At minimum, she is “housing insecure,” a description for people, experts say, who double or triple up in overcrowded apartments or who move frequently. The term also applies to people without a lease or a contract that grants them legal rights to live somewhere and have no space of their own. Their desperate state may be dressed up as couch surfing, or the sort of measures that Sarah takes, but it is a form of homelessness nonetheless.

Sarah does not use that term to describe her circumstances. She says, “I would say I’m housing insecure.”

When many people refer to “the homeless,” they may be talking about people settling in tents, underpasses or cars, but such people are a fraction of the many like Sarah without a stable place to live.

In Los Angeles County alone, nearly 70,000 people experience homelessness on any given night, according to the 2022 point-in-time count. By contrast, a September 2021 report from the Mayor’s Office of City Homelessness Initiatives estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of people like Sarah wrestling with housing insecurity in the city. (Nationally, there are well over half a million unhoused people, and millions more who are at risk of joining them.)

“The image in most people’s minds when it comes to homelessness in California is the chronic person living in a tent on a sidewalk,” explains Ned Resnikoff, policy director for California YIMBY and the author of a new report on ending homelessness. “That’s a significant and growing portion of the homeless population in California, but when you’re talking about the typical experience, it is usually not chronic, but the more intermittent form, like one housing situation to another.

That’s crucial to keep in mind for Mayor Karen Bass, who pledged to “drastically reduce homelessness” and “end street encampments” in Los Angeles. On her very first day in office in mid-December, the mayor declared a state of emergency to respond to the housing crisis. The City Council approved it the following day.

To really put a dent in visible homelessness, Bass will need to galvanize a wide array of resources to produce structures to house people on the streets. She will also need to stabilize the situation for people who sometimes still have a private place to sleep.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority calculated in 2020 that a network of supports were helping an average of 207 people out of homelessness each day in the city, but that the overall situation was worsening with 227 new people losing their housing.

The housing crisis in Los Angeles is based on some fairly simple principles. There is far more demand for affordable housing than there is supply, so prices have soared in recent years, and few renters’ incomes have come close to keeping up. The result, according to a February 2022 report, is that renters in Los Angeles County are the second most “cost-burdened” in the nation, and rents grew about 20% in a year.

A recent analysis by the personal finance site SmartAsset shows that three in every 10 renters in Los Angeles pay more than half of their income for housing. Sarah, who works full time, would have to become one of them to afford a simple market-rate studio apartment.

Personal finance experts generally consider people who spend more than 30% of their income on housing to be prone to accumulate debt. People who spend more than half of their income on rent tend to be extremely vulnerable to a single bad event — the loss of a job, a breakup, car trouble, a broken arm or falling out with a housemate — that can force them out of where they live. In extreme cases, they can slide straight onto the streets.

But many more end up trapped, like Sarah, in an in-between world, relying when they can on loved ones who have their own problems.

 

A new class of the demimonde, the "intermittently housed". America is in trouble, folks. It has been for most of my life, Something's got to change very soon or it's going to shatter.

Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is sending out a message that higher education will no longer continue in the state, as he is currently engineering a complete takeover of New College of Florida to serve as a loud warning as to what's coming to a state college campus near you.

Gov. Ron DeSantis began the process Friday of transforming Sarasota's New College of Florida into a more conservative institution, appointing six new board members, including conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a dean at conservative Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank.

"It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida's classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south," Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said in a statement.

The shakeup of the 13-member board is certain to create major tensions at New College, an institution that started as a progressive private school before becoming the state's liberal arts honors college. The small school's student body and faculty have a reputation for leaning left politically.

Turning New College into a Florida version of Hillsdale would amount to flipping it upside down, a wholesale reinvention akin to a hostile takeover, and one that many current students and faculty are likely to resist.

DeSantis aides blasted the school Friday and said an overhaul is needed.

"Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning," said DeSantis Communications Director Taryn Fenske.

Rufo is known for his activism on transgender and racial issues, making him a leader in the new wave of conservative culture wars. He joined DeSantis when the governor signed HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which is derided by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill.

Rufo said in a series of Twitter posts Friday that public universities have "been corrupted by woke nihilism" and he is "ready to transform higher education from within." He said he plans to recruit new faculty to New College to "create an institution where academics can thrive, without self-censorship."

“My ambition is to help the new board majority transform New College into a classical liberal arts institution. We are recapturing higher education.” Rufo said.

Rufo recently applauded DeSantis on Twitter for requesting information on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory at all Florida colleges and universities.

"Gov. DeSantis is going to lay siege to university 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' programs," Rufo wrote.

Among Rufo's goals for New College that he laid out in a tweet: Restructuring the administration, developing "a new core curriculum," eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion policies and restructuring academic departments.

 

Now, DeSantis isn't about to mess with a big name football school, at least not yet. But a small liberal arts honors college like New College is the perfect target to turn into Liberty University lite. The Supreme Court will make it much easier late this year when they eliminate diversity from public and private colleges and universities, and DeSantis will use New College as his testing grounds for destroying public universities nationwide should he be elected in 2024 or 2028.

 

This is all part of the plan.

It Only Took Fifteen Times

Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker f the House on the fifteenth ballot, late after midnight last night, and has surrendered so much of his power that he may not survive the month in the office.

 

The vote capped a historically dysfunctional week in which members — who were not even allowed to be sworn in before choosing a speaker — sat through vote after vote with the world watching. McCarthy was the first party leader in a century whose race even went past the first ballot.

He'd fumbled a previous bid for speaker in 2015 before it came to a vote and some of his initial backers openly questioned whether it was possible for him to succeed this week given the strength of his opposition.

But McCarthy’s victory also came at a steep price: In exchange for the rebels’ support, he agreed to various concessions (the details of which are still not fully known) that would give conservatives more power to set the agenda, block legislation they dislike, and quickly call a vote to remove McCarthy if he pushes back.

With at least four members still in the “Never Kevin” camp, and the possibility of the majority shrinking through resignations or acts of God, he'll remain a vote or two away from the brink at all times.

He will have to manage expectations and deliver results in high-stakes battles over issues like spending, reauthorizing the farm bill, and, most especially, raising the debt ceiling. One wrong move could lead to a shutdown, financial crisis, or his ouster as speaker, none of which are mutually exclusive.

But for now, the Congress can adopt rules, set up committees, hold hearings, and begin to at least outwardly resemble a normal functioning institution. That's a victory no one should take for granted anymore.

 

The good news is that McCarthy's position is so precarious that it's bound to fail. The bad news is once the Freedom Caucus nutjobs get everything they want from McCarthy as far as committees and assignments go, he's 100% disposable. 

But the real damage will be the rules he's agreed to in the House: No bill can increase spending over five or ten year timeframes, the House Ethics committee has to have a public complaint period, the return of the Holman Rule, which would allow specific punitive government salary cuts or entire program eliminations, and will almost certainly allow the House to default on the national debt, crashing the economy.

And yes, the big one is the Coronavirus Pandemic subcommittee, which is going to be months of stupid people having hearings from "medical professionals" about horse dewormer.

Get ready. These idiots broke the House, and they're going to break the country.

The Big Bluegrass Breakdown

Kentucky Republicans, in a position where they can pass anything they want with a supermajority and override any veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, are set to turn the commonwealth into the poorest state in the nation.

 

The top priority bill of the Kentucky General Assembly's Republican supermajority, which would lower the state's individual income tax rate to 4% beginning in 2024, passed through the state House Thursday.

House Bill 1, which would also codify an automatic reduction of the tax rate from 5% to 4.5% for Jan. 1 of this year, was passed out of the chamber on a near party-line vote of 79-19, advancing the GOP supermajority's long-term plan to eventually eliminate Kentucky's income tax.

The tax cut bill passed through the House budget committee earlier that morning, with Republicans touting it as a way to put more money back into the pockets of taxpayers and spur future economic and population growth.

"It's putting more money back (to) the hard-working Kentuckians across the commonwealth," said Rep. Brandon Reed, R-Hodgenville, the lead sponsor of the bill and budget committee vice chair. "They'll be able to spend their money like they see fit, they'll be able to pay down debt, they'll be able to save for their families and spend accordingly."

All four Democrats on the budget committee voted against HB 1, arguing it would deprive the state's General Fund of more than $1 billion in tax revenue annually from the previous 5% rate, while largely benefiting the wealthiest in the state.

"This particular piece of legislation hurts lower-income Kentuckians and helps the wealthier, higher-income Kentuckians," said Rep. Ruth Ann Palumbo, D-Lexington. "It is not sustainable. Future legislators will have to raise taxes and we are not being fiscally responsible."

The tax cut bill is a product of Republicans' landmark House Bill 8 that passed in the 2022 session, which seeks to trigger automatic reductions of .5% to the individual income tax rate each year — so long as two budget conditions are met — until the income tax is eliminated.

Those HB 8 conditions are that the budget reserve trust fund (often called rainy day fund) is at least 10% of tax revenue for the previous fiscal year, and those same receipts exceed spending by at least the amount of revenue that would be lost by cutting the tax rate a full percentage point.

While the reduction of the tax rate from 5% to 4.5% beginning this year was automatic due to those conditions being met, HB 1 codifies that change, while also approving the further reduction to 4% beginning Jan. 1, 2024.

A fiscal note for HB 1 estimated it would reduce state tax revenue by $316 million through just the first half of 2024.

Pam Thomas with left-leaning think tank Kentucky Center for Economic Policy told the committee a 4% tax rate would result in state revenues dropping by roughly $1.2 billion annually from what they would be at 5% — more than what the state appropriates for its entire higher education system.

Noting the income tax reduction under the bill would be permanent, Thomas said the sales tax may have to be raised in the future if the economy hits a downturn and the state doesn't have enough revenue to meet critical obligations, disproportionately hurting lower-income people.

However, Rep. Jason Petrie, the Republican chair of the budget committee, dismissed those fears, saying Democratic critics have warned of pending increases to the sales tax rate since the legislature cut individual and corporate income tax rates from 6% to 5% in 2018, which hasn't happened.

"The rate of the sales tax remains the same," Petrie said. "We have every intent of continuing with that same sales tax rate."

Under House Bill 8, dozens of services previously exempt from a sales tax lost that exemption, though the estimated revenue from those moves was roughly $100 million — far from making up for revenue lost from the income tax cut.

 

The goal of course is to eliminate the state's income tax completely in a decade, leaving the state dependent on double digit sales taxes on goods and services, while also cutting as much as they can from schools, roads, social programs and basic government services.   The state's budget surplus will vanish, and the wealthiest Kentuckians will get tens of thousands of dollars.

Without income tax, the state's general fund will collapse, or have to be replaced with billions in additional sales tax, which is exactly what's going to come in the years ahead.

Mississippi Burning, Con't

Texas and Florida may be in the news more when it comes to Republican-run state governments, but in the end, there's no better example of what Republicans want to accomplish with governance than the state of Mississippi and reducing its infrastructure to rubble in order to privatize and profitize as much of basic services as possible in one of the poorest states in the nation. 

This goes for schools, it goes for roads, it goes for voting, it goes for water in the capital city of Jackson, and it sure as hell goes for the state's failing health care system, facing financial collapse, especially for majority Black counties and cities.

Mississippi’s healthcare crisis is worsening and an overhaul of the state’s “current system of care is unmistakably essential,” a leading medical group warned hours before the State Legislature was set to begin its 2023 session at noon Monday.

“The lack of access to healthcare for many Mississippians is currently a crisis, not a new crisis, but one that has been fermenting — and is getting worse,” the Mississippi State Medical Association said in a press release this morning. “As hospitals close across Mississippi, access to life-saving medical care becomes a real threat to all Mississippi. While the debate rages on as to why our hospitals are closing, the immediate crisis progressively engulfs us.”

Across the state, several hospitals have closed or cut services in recent months. During a hearing with lawmakers in November, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney warned that 38 of Mississippi’s rural hospitals, or about 54%, could close. Mississippi is already the poorest state with some of the worst health outcomes, including during the pandemic.

“That is a situation that is intolerable from an economic standpoint — to lose 54% of our hospitals in the state — much less from an access to care perspective,” PBS reported Edney saying in November.

For years, health-care professionals, including those at MSMA, have said that the State’s refusal to expand Medicaid to more working Mississippians has contributed significantly to hospital closures. Medicaid expansion was part of former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, giving states funds to expand Medicaid access to people who make too much money for traditional Medicaid, but who do not earn enough to afford private insurance and are not eligible for ACA subsidies.

“Again, the healthcare crisis Mississippi now faces has been foreseeable for years and was indeed predicted,” MSMA said in its statement. “The fact is, there is a sizable gap that exists for working Mississippians who cannot afford private insurance, yet whose income is too much to qualify for Mississippi Medicaid. When these individuals need healthcare, hospitals are required to treat them regardless of their inability to pay. And because these individuals are uninsured, the hospital is not compensated for necessary care. Such an economical strain on hospitals is not one that even the most successful private business could not endure.”

Republicans don't want hospitals that work. They want sick, broken people who are forced into serfdom or worse, in communities that are sick and broken, so they can blame the Black, Native, and Latino people in those communities and write them off. They don't want them to be alive, because they're going to vote Democratic, and if they are dead and dying, Republicans will continue to always win and always be in power so they can continue to get rich. 

They don't want government to help the poor, the disenfranchised, the minority, the struggling. They want those parts of government permanently dismantled. They need a permanent underclass to exploit, and that means refusing to fund the parts of government that provide help to those who need it the most, because Republicans figure those people are the least productive to exploit and the most likely to vote against them for trying to exploit them anyway.

Since 2013, Mississippi’s Republican leaders have rejected more than $10 billion from the federal government that could have been used to expand Medicaid, even with the federal government offering to pay between 90% and 100% of the cost.

As it sought a buyer last year, the struggling Singing River Health System in Jackson County said the lack of Medicaid expansion was a primary driver of its financial troubles and those of other hospitals that “provide significant care for underinsured and uninsured populations.” Singing River employs about 3,500 people across three hospitals and three-dozen clinics.

Gov. Tate Reeves has long opposed expanding Medicaid, dating back to his time leading the Mississippi Senate as lieutenant governor when he dismissed it as “Obamacare expansion.” The current Republican lieutenant governor, Delbert Hosemann, has expressed interest in expanding Medicaid, but Reeves and GOP leaders in the Mississippi House have continued to oppose the idea.

Mississippi is one of just a dozen states that have declined to expand Medicaid. Despite representing less than a quarter of the country, states that refused to expand Medicaid accounted for 74% of all rural hospital closures between 2010 and 2021, an American Hospital Association report found last year.

No health care, no schools, no roads, no water, all misery to exploit. That's what they want. Survival for those who can maybe struggle hard enough to maybe afford to see a doctor, the rest worked so hard that they die young and never see a dime in Social Security or Medicare and never qualify for any other government programs because they "make too much money." 

States keeping their subjects poor, uneducated, and too tired to do anything about it.

The Republican way.